the Father of His Country sired a country that is still struggling with tobacco policies. Particularly concerning cigarettes, a legal, widely used product long known to be harmful when used as intended. Today’s chapter in this saga concerns government policies of behavior modification.
The Biden administration is not bashful about wielding government power to censor the public’s preferences — internal combustion vehicles, gas stoves,smoking-related deaths over several decades. Is it condescending to ban a product favored by Black people because it is favored by Black people making unhealthy decisions? Or callous not to? The product’s harms have a “Menthol reportedly makes it easier to start smoking and harder to quit, and makes deep inhalation of smoke easier.
Many public policies involve incentives for behaviors deemed socially beneficial: homeownership, charitable giving, having children, seat belt use . But ambitious government policies to discourage disapproved behaviors can have unintended consequences, as well as the ominous consequence of encouraging government to wade ever-deeper into behavior modification, treating the public as malleable clay.
Many states, however, are nicotine addicts, hooked on revenue from cigarettes, the most heavily taxed consumer good. The ideal yield from such taxes would be zero, but the end of tobacco revenue would be inconvenient, so tobacco taxes are calculated to be not too discouraging. All lives matter, but …Besides, cigarette taxation is regressive: Smokers are increasingly low-income and impervious to public health announcements.
In an 18-month span in 1990s in California, smoking declined 17 percent while the state ran broadcast ads like this: “I tried it twice and I, ah, got all red in the face and I couldn’t inhale and I felt like a jerk and, ah, never tried it again, which is the same as what happened to me with sex.” Time was, smoking seemed suave. declined to 60 percent from 80 percent in 2018. Only 11 percent of U.S. adults smoke, down from 42 percent six decades ago. Information is working.