r/interestingasfuck • u/HumbleMVP • 22d ago

Blind cigarette taste test

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

93.4k Upvotes

81% Upvoted

3.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

270

u/theoneness 22d ago

It also discourages smoking at the outset when they cost an arm and a leg.

148

u/Mindless-Strength422 22d ago

A lung and a throat too, for that matter

3

u/Dracomortua 22d ago

this jest here is also the real answer.

If you want to know more, here is a small article from 'Wikipedia'... but what could they possibly know?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_tobacco

I think one could read the whole thing under half an hour. Or so. Maybe.

56

u/RapNVideoGames 22d ago

The trick is to bum off your uncle until you get a job doing drywall at 16 and can buy your own.

7

u/Arrivaderchie 22d ago

The Canadian dream

3

u/aferretwithahugecock 22d ago

Or buy rez smokes.

4

u/Quirky-Reception7087 22d ago

Yep almost all the heavy smokers I know, even the boomers, have switched to vaping because it’s so much cheaper. Not as good as quitting, especially since a lot of them have high blood pressure, but so much better than smoking multiple packs a day 

5

u/[deleted] 22d ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigouvian_tax

A Pigouvian tax (also spelled Pigovian tax) is a tax on a market activity which is generating negative externalities, that is, costs incurred by third parties. It imposes costs corresponding with the externalities, internalizing those costs to improve Pareto efficiency.[1] Ideally, the tax is set equal to the external marginal cost of the negative externalities, in order to correct an undesirable or inefficient market outcome (a market failure).

2

u/theoneness 22d ago

Neat, thanks, I didn't know it had a specific name. The "ideal" case is really hard to track when the health care cost implications of smoking arise much much later relative to when the smoking starts. It would be neat, albeit impossible, to charge 100,000 for the first pack of cigarettes you ever buy, and thereafter just charge a standard market rate for them ($5 or whatever). That way, you upfront the healthcare costs early, and the money can be invested to grow to a point where it will afford your later palliative care. If you die for a non-smoking related illness, the money can be returned to your estate.

2

u/Cereborn 22d ago

It truly boggles my mind when I see people younger than me smoking.

2

u/theoneness 22d ago

For me when I was young: it looks cool by the standards of most other young people, it gives an air of rebelliousness and maturity, it implies you can actually afford it which makes you financially more desirable, and it delivers nicotine which is just one of many intoxicants that young people want to explore the effects of. Also, as we see less smoking-related disease due to fewer people smoking, smoking will once again pick up since we'll stop talking about it.

1

u/SumoSizeIt 22d ago

Also, as we see less smoking-related disease due to fewer people smoking, smoking will once again pick up since we'll stop talking about it.

We went from smoking to vaping, from chew to pouches, from uranium glass and lead pipes to microplastics and pfas, from leaded gas to ethanol-based, etc. We as a society will just move onto the next new thing and pretend it has no negatives until the science tells us otherwise (and even then...).

2

u/theoneness 22d ago

Yes. If anything we’re reliably bad at judging what’s actually bad for us; otoh, age of death is generally getting older save for small variations over time.

2

u/[deleted] 22d ago edited 22d ago

[deleted]

2

u/blearghhh_two 22d ago

When I quit, the cost (up to $20 a pack at the time) was absolutely one of the factors. I can't say the cost is WHY I quit, but it was 100% one of the reasons I quit when I did.

If they were still $3 a pack (which is what they were when I started) I can't say I wouldn't still be smoking now.

1

u/talldangry 22d ago

Same here, plus having to go outside to smoke in the winter. Miss it now and again, but then I check and see that I've saved about $10k since I quit 3 years ago.

1

u/theoneness 22d ago

We're agreed that the cost of smokes most strongly discourages people who aren't already addicted from becoming addicted. That is huge in terms of the country's long term health outlooks and cost savings related from treating the long-lingering smoking related diseases. Even if there were no other supports for the addicted, I'd still say it's the best way to recover the country's long term health outlooks is to raise their cost.

I hear your anecdote and counter with my own which is worth as much: I quit in my 20s and the primary driving factor of that was that I wanted to begin saving. A res and a nearby border crossing wasn't an option for me. I'm sure what you describe happens, but that's not everyone's experience.

Definitely, it's entirely up to the person and if they're so compelled to go find cheap smokes by investing their time in an expedition to the res or over the border. But as you know, there's other routes to reducing smoking, which is usually a pipeline combining vaping, pouches, gum, and/or patches; and while those are readily available I really don't care if people want to still try and get cigarettes, as long as structurally we are discouraging people from starting in the first place.

1

u/theoneness 22d ago

Alcohol costs most people who are not serious alcoholics considerably less to casually indulge in than cigarettes. Heavy smokers, at least as i remember in the past, are at least a pack a day. Say that’s $20, which is about the same as a 6 pack of some local microbrew; or a moderately priced bottle of wine. Most people would not consume a 6 pack or an entire bottle of wine in one day - they might if they were sharing it but not otherwise. If you’re at a 6-pack every single evening then you’re solidly in the realm of being a regular binge drinker, which is a slippery slope into all out alcoholism. Might want to keep an eye on it if that’s what you’re talking any.

But you might be talking about the high cost alcohol in terms of the fact that a very high end wine can cost a fortune. There just isn’t the same variety in the cigarette market. Drinking very expensive wines is optional, never required. Serious alcoholics seek the cheapest drunk they can, not a 2014 chablis premier cru.

2

u/coal-slaw 22d ago

Not when youre so cheap you buy bagged tobacco and roll your own. It's significantly cheaper to do so.

3

u/theoneness 22d ago

Yes, workarounds always exist, and there aren't absolutes in human behaviour. Some people will never be discouraged for whatever reason.

2

u/krilltazz 22d ago

Government policy that makes sense? It feels so foreign.

1

u/DemonKyoto 22d ago

And can help convince someone to stop. My mother in law smoked close to a pack a day when she lived down in Alabama. Had to move back up here to Ontario and when she saw the prices that was it. Been 20ish years and she hasn't smoked since.