From Roberto Mantaro Samaniego's, "Kill the Octopus," Fall '98 But while many people are concerned that Big Tobacco got off too easily, the larger issues remain of how to better disseminate information about the risks of tobacco and how to distribute future healthcare costs incurred by smoking. Obviously the government's classification and hence regulation of smoking was affected when the industry hid or denied information that was damaging to its interests. Individuals, however, have always known that tobacco is dangerous -- after all, cigarettes have long been dubbed "coffin nails." People pick up smoking because of the associated glamour, and because it is a complement to various social activities. For example, when my male friends began smoking, I noticed a marked increase in their ability to "pick up chicks" -- although the quality of the "chicks" they "picked up" deteriorated on the personality dimension. Tobacco companies capitalize on perceptions about the seductive nature of smoking. They manipulate images to link smoking with ideas of independence and self-confidence. An advertising insert in the January 27 issue of The Daily Pennsylvanian featured a cowboy reaching into a can of Copenhagen chewing tobacco, his face alluringly obscured by his hat. That smoking is unhealthy fits in perversely well with this attitude. While people are susceptible to advertising, decisions to smoke may also be based upon incomplete information. Essentially, individuals do not experience the long-term costs of using tobacco when they pick up the habit. You don't cough or lose your breath every time you take a drag. It is impossible to understand addiction until you have suffered from it. And young people who take up smoking do not know much about health insurance. With this in mind, anti-tobacco advocates should focus on more effective ways to reach would-be smokers. All tobacco-related research should be made public. The Surgeon General's warning on the Camels in my hand warns, "Smoking by pregnant women may result in fetal injury, premature birth and low birth weight." If instead it read "Quitting smoking now increases your sperm count," it might be the last pack I buy. People might also be deterred from beginning the habit if smokers were made to bear the costs of their decisions. What's done is done, and it seems fair to slam tobacco firms with past health care costs to the extent that they distorted personal and governmental decisions about smoking. However, a better arrangement needs to be found for the future. Prices, as economists will tell you, are information. Suppose you calculate the expected healthcare costs of smoking and divide it by the number of cigarettes. Add this as a tax onto the price of each pack. Then, each time you buy a pack, you receive information on its health costs, as you face the future monetary costs of your decision. Smokers face the cost of smoking through increases in their private health insurance premiums, but this is not a cost they face at the Wawa counter. Economists have estimated that annual health care spending due to smoking amounts to over $50 billion. Americans smoke 5.1 cigarettes per head per day. There are about 250,000,000 Americans. Multiply, divide, do the hokey pokey and you find that the approximate healthcare cost per pack is $2.15. Under this regime, each time I buy my pack of Camels -- at a whopping $4.50 a pack -- I pay for the production cost of the good and the healthcare costs I am likely to incur as a result. The proceeds of such a tax should be earmarked for Medicare. Part of it could also subsidize health insurance for those who quit smoking, giving them additional incentives to overcome their addiction. The tax could be adjusted according to various indices of tobacco-related health costs (based on economic models or the composition of tobacco products) to encourage tobacco companies to make their products safer in the long run. The above suggestions are quite rudimentary. Still, the point is that slick counter-advertising is necessary to destroy the social role of tobacco. Sophisticated pricing can reflect the "true" personal costs of tobacco use, allowing people to make well informed decisions. Smoking behavior will not change much without such policies.
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