Haven't seen them around.
Grab me some

currently NYC is trying to add more taxes onto cig's. it will effectively make a pack of them cost about 10$ USD.. though about 7 of that is tax..
in light of this situation. i can only hope for more smokers. since i can't afford health insurance (in some part DUE to smokers).. more smokers doesn't make my health insurance more expensive. but they do put more money INTO nyc.. witch can leave to better stuff. hopefully.. like.. garbage pick up and recycling! so.. i agree. do the world a favor and start smoking today! your really just screwing everyone else if you don't.

i vividly remember the day president clinton officially launched the global war against smoking.

the official speech had the same stucture and pomp, i just wish, like any good president he'd had the guts to pick on arabs rather than on me.

Given my reputation for being the resident right wing bastard, no one should be entirely surprised to know that I'm a dedicated smoker of a domestic brand "Hope Light".

(insert jokes I've heard a million times here)

Whinging about smoking is not only pasé, but silly in my opinion unless one wishes to also whine about any of the other human habits which are not in the best interest of the individual and society as a whole. But then again, thats what were all gathered here for in the first place isnt it?

The issue is not "ban smoking." It's - should the government be profiting off of an extremely addictive and harmful substance?

It seems that same question would apply to any "sin tax". Why should any government which is not accountable in its spending be allowed to profit off alcohol or gambling? Moreover, why should governments be allowed to own companies which have nothing to do with governing or society?

Slightly OT, but you may or may not recall that around 98 a 20 Yen per pack tax was added to cigarettes for the purposes of paying down what ammounts to the gambling debts of government beurocrats. Seems that back when JR was still nationalized during the bubble, they engaged in alot of real estate speculation. Needless to say, they lost their shirts. Now, I as a smoker am paying a tax to cover up governmental blundering which happened before I even got here. I understand the idea of healthcare taxes on cigs n booze (who knows how the money is actually spent tho) but this one?

The point of "sin taxes" is to depress demand, and in the case of cigarettes, it works. This money in theory can also offset the huge burden on state and local governments to deal with medical costs related to tobacco.

Sin taxes are totally different from a national government directly profiting off of their citizen's addiction and suppressing serious dialogue about the effects of smoking in order to make sure they don't lose money. Instead of "smoking causes lung cancer," we get "have good smoking manners!"

My point however is that we the sin tax paying consumers dont really know where the money goes. Does a tax on whiskey pay for rehab or a condolance fund for widows and children of people killed by drunk drivers? Probably not.

Taxing cigarettes in the name of healthcare or any other thing without assurance that the moeny goes to medical care or to help people quit smoking is equally BS.

Sin taxes are a fictional justification without clean accounting. Its the same as the government owning whiskey and cigarette factories in my book.

Regards for doing the dirty work Chris, mate.

Should I be able to ask for a pro-rated income tax refund since the SDF force in Iraq is financed by my tax dollars and is constitutionally questionable? Maybe I should've gotten a refund for the portion of Koizumi's Yasukuni visits I paid for. I guess the government could actually ask for more tax dollars from me, though, since they've been running a deficit. Which is to say that I'm not sure how (or why) we can conflate clean accounting with taxation and its (mis)application.

I originally wasn't talking about taxation as much as investment priorities trumping public health.

I might be complaining about an issue you are already aware of, but the paragraph breaks aren't visible in the RSS feed. Small thing, but would make the Marxy RSS experience a lot more enjoyable for all of us reading your (fabulous) texts through a web based reader (Google reader in my case).

I have been praying for an improvement in my RSS for a long time, but God does not deliver.

I understand what you're saying, marxy: my comments were actually in response to Chris_B.

Anyway, have you seen this?
http://mobile.iht.com/articles/2007/05/02/business/norway.4.xhtml

I'm pleased that since first coming here in '98 there have been a lot of initiatives taken: smoking reduced or banned on train platforms, smoking on public streets becoming finable in certain wards, no more billboard ads, no more magazine ads (if memory serves) -- that's why the machines have been sexed up and you get the キャンギャル handing out free samples of crack, sometimes with tables set up in front of liquor stores. The market is shrinking, with young females the only demographic on the increase.

Once proper education kicks in (it's been pathetic until now), the market will crumble even more I'm hoping. I wonder if in the future there will be any class action lawsuits against big tobacco here.

Ironically, JT has a pharmaceutical subsidiary, but they don't deal in cancer drugs.

Either a product is legal, or it isn't. If it's legal, then I don't understand why it's any more dastardly for the state to have a stake in it than for any other product. (Of course, there's an entirely separate debate about whether the state should have any equity in industry at all).

For tobacco, along with certain other products, there's an added legal and moral onus to warn consumers of the dangers of the product. But it'd be pretty much impossible to argue that smokers these days are unaware of the health risks. In fact, research consistently showers that consumers oversestimate the dangers of smoking.

We've talked about this before, but the linkage between cancer and smoking in Japan is still seen by many to be "unproven." I think this does have something to do with who has to profit.

It's well-known that intelligence services around the globe finance their operations with drugs. If conventional wisdom about the Yakuza and the ruling elite is to be believed, then the government profits from shabu as well, no? Not to mention the way it boosts productivity. Hell if you're not mainlining crank for the Hinomaru...
This is more like when we waited in line for state-produced tobacco and vodka back in Mother Russia. Interesting take. I didn't know about the 50% stake. As a former smoker I can attest that most of the JT brands are total ass anyway.
Kent is the brand that used to have asbestos in their filters, isn't it?

http://www.japantoday.com/jp/news/406719

I hope he at least owns stock in JT!

Kinda in poor taste...