It’s not the high, it’s the strength of the addiction. Nicotine is hard to kick. This has been known about since the English landed at what’s become Virginia in the USA. Tobacco has a long history of being used as an addictive trade good. There’s a great book by Iain Gately - La Diva Nicotina: The Story of How Tobacco Seduced the World. Which covers the history of tobacco.
MisterFrog@aussie.zone 22 hours ago
Sorry I should have been clearer. I agree the addiction is insidious.
However, making it prohibitively expensive I would argue is part of the reason smoking rates plummeted, as well as no indoor smoking and other smoking restrictions.
I’m only arguing that the illicit trade has been allowed to bloom, and that the black market could be massively curbed with actual enforcement.
And I’m being incredibly sarcastic because there’s often someone coming out of the internet woodwork to say that taxing tobacco isn’t effective.
That, there are people out there who think smoking is nice, which I think is really dumb, because the high really, really isn’t worth the cancer.
I totally get it’s very addictive and if you’ve started, it’s very hard to stop, and I sympathize with those people. Only having a go at the people who argue for removing the high taxes, and that smoking is a “personal choice”.