Hi, I'm a student undertaking my final year of the international baccaleurate dimploma. I am doing my extended essay, a resarch paper on the following..
Topic:
An evaluation of the effectiveness of economic policies for tobacco control
Research question:
Is taxation the most effective economic solution to solve the tobacco problem in comparison to prohibition and legislation?
Would you be able to assist me in any way with regard to statistics or other information? It would be greatly appreciated. Please contact me via email. Thank you!
Rachel - Research question:
Is taxation the most effective economic solution to solve the tobacco problem in comparison to prohibition and legislation?
..........................
Rachel,
Please define "tobacco problem."
Rachel
IF you see a statistic; always ask the source, and what is included; what can be excluded and is it? Do they try to quantify for "denormalization" effect? Is there a method to get grey market and black market cigarette estimates included? I have not seen a gov't consumption figure that even tries to quantify cigarettes sold on reserves (have their own distribution system), cigarettes that are brought from out of province/state (cheaper), etc. There are many people who are starting to grow their own tobacco in the garden or use a co-op distribution system for organic tobacco. Its not a verifiable figure (untaxable), so the gov't thinks they can ignore it. The public doesn't realize these are starting to make up over 25% of the cigarettes smoked in Canada, yet the gov't still ignores it.
After seeing the ads below (many times in one week) would you tell the gov't, or any surveyor that you smoked? I wouldn't, whether I smoked at home or not, whether I had children or not. Yet again gov't figures are hard numbers, there's no "denormalization" factor, etc in their survey figures.
Here is the PDF of the evil skull in smoke "information/education session" ad.
http://starzed.tripod.com/files/
...rtment_smoke_ad
Federal Gov't Skeleton hand ad
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hl-vs/tob...-
spectre_e.html
PS there was no email addy in your post.
Rachel--
You can find this information all over the place. I'll give you one link here, "Relying on sin taxes reveals the contradictions in the state budget" at http://www.washingtonpolicy.org/
...s_SinTaxes.html
The telling tale of this strategy is actually found in the 2002 "Strategic Thinking on State Tobacco Tax Increases" from the from the Robert Wood Johnson foundation's SmokeLess States program (now defunct), "For the most part, this unprecedented success [in raising cigarette taxes in 21 states] can be attributed to state fiscal crises resulting from the downturn in the national economy. State policymakers were desperate to find new revenues to plug growing deficits in state budgets." http://www.rwjf.org/newsroom/
SLS...STobaccoTax.pdf
The push for raising tobacco taxes tends to go hand-in-hand with smoking bans. (The rationale that there is a need to "level the playing field" indicates that smoking bans tend to hurt economies. The idea is that raising taxes will offset any financial hardships.) See, for a start, The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty – July 2003, vol. 53, no. 7, "The Economics of Smoking Bans" which concludes with "This approach [of bans], in addition to being morally destructive, is bad economics as well." http://www.fee.org/publications/...le.asp?
aid=5120
Or, see "Smoking bans: Good public policy? Or simply a great pharmaceutical marketing plan?" (February 23, 2007) at http://boycottjohnsonandjohnson....n.blogspot.com/
--and note that this last one was written by a nonsmoker.
So, maybe before you try to write anything about the "tobacco problem" you should be writing about the "tobacco control problem" *wink*
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