How much should a pack of cigarettes cost in Ireland?

nelly17 wrote: »

). This, in the long run would save the Health Services millions but the Government wont bite the bullet on it and would rather eek up the price for an immediate monetary gain at a long term cost to the country.

It's not just an immediate monetary gain though. Cigarette tax is many times higher healh service expenditure on tobacco related disease so if your eye is on the money rather than health it makes much more sense for governments to rinse smokers whilst banking on them remaining smokers.

osarusan wrote: »

Really? Many times? Where did you read that?

More, yes, but I'm pretty sure it's not many times.

Something like 1.9 billion in tax, and 1.2 billion in spending.

Do you have a link for some Irish figures? The last time I had this conversation I could only find reliable stats for Britain which was something like direct tax take 12 billion and direct health care expenditure 3 billion.* I've just grabbed the first link I've found here and it wasn't what I was working off before which puts direct health care cost be teen 3 and 6 billion. So I'll retract "many times" from my previous post, but the point remains that smoking brings in more in revenue than it costs in health care spending in monetary terms.

https://fullfact.org/factchecks/does_smoking_cost_as_much_as_it_makes_for_the_treasury-29288

* I'd be surprised if your estimate above is correct for Ireland because it's so different to everything I've ever seen from Britain but it's still plausible.

** None of this even takes in to account the indirect costs. There's a lot of research that shows that smokers actually cost the health service less than non smokers when you take in to account the extra years non smokers have on average compared to smokers. These tend to be the most expensive years of a person's life to the exchequer. I'm not going to Google for a link here because it's not central to my point but it'd be easy to find things for and against if you're interested.

KERSPLAT! wrote: »

Meh, I don't smoke so it makes no odds to me. Jack them up to €20 a packet for all I care. I just hope they're too expensive for my kids to even think about picking them up, as well as them being smart enough to know better than to go near them in the first place

For the last couple of weeks I was getting the bus to work and I didn't see any of the kids smoking 'packs' of cigarettes! All smoking rollies. How much is a box of Amber Leaf now? €6?

KERSPLAT! wrote: »

Bump them all to €20!!

I'm not really in favour of that as I smoke

nelly17 wrote: »

Would just fuel the black market more IMO

Only among the addicted...

LDN_Irish wrote: »

Do you have a link for some Irish figures? The last time I had this conversation I could only find reliable stats for Britain which was something like direct tax take 12 billion and direct health care expenditure 3 billion.* I've just grabbed the first link I've found here and it wasn't what I was working off before which puts direct health care cost be teen 3 and 6 billion. So I'll retract "many times" from my previous post, but the point remains that smoking brings in more in revenue than it costs in health care spending in monetary terms.

https://fullfact.org/factchecks/does_smoking_cost_as_much_as_it_makes_for_the_treasury-29288

* I'd be surprised if your estimate above is correct for Ireland because it's so different to everything I've ever seen from Britain but it's still plausible.

** None of this even takes in to account the indirect costs. There's a lot of research that shows that smokers actually cost the health service less than non smokers when you take in to account the extra years non smokers have on average compared to smokers. These tend to be the most expensive years of a person's life to the exchequer. I'm not going to Google for a link here because it's not central to my point but it'd be easy to find things for and against if you're interested.

It's a couple of years old:

The Government rakes in an estimated €2 billion a year in tax revenue from cigarettes but roughly the same amount is spent on treating illness caused by tobacco.

http://www.independent.ie/regionals/wicklowpeople/lifestyle/government-spends-2bn-tax-revenue-from-cigarettes-on-smokingrelated-illnesses-29083408.html


Anyway, I think one issue is whether further price rises simply push more people to illegal cigarettes to such an extent that it actually means less revenue.

washman3 wrote: »

Cigs are an unbelievable cash cow for the Government.
The extortionate price has little or nothing to do with health and wellbeing, in spite of the rubbish they frequently spout.

And so they should be ,

"Currently, tobacco-related illnesses cost the State up to €2 billion a year – €2,000 for every smoker in Ireland." quote from the journal.ie

smoking costs the tax payer more than the government gets back from tax on cigarettes.

300,756 bed days in hospitals due to smoking related illness,

280,000,000 euro due to smoking related illnesses, - figure from 2008,

but hey im just some guy on the internet, dont trust me do the reding/googling your self.

osarusan wrote: »

It's a couple of years old:

http://www.independent.ie/regionals/wicklowpeople/lifestyle/government-spends-2bn-tax-revenue-from-cigarettes-on-smokingrelated-illnesses-29083408.html


Anyway, I think one issue is whether further price rises simply push more people to illegal cigarettes to such an extent that it actually means less revenue.

Thanks for that. I'm not implying that you need to do anything else here but I'm sceptical of the claims in that link. It just doesn't tally with anything else I've read and is unbelievably different from the stats released for Britain despite them only having marginally higher tax on them. Completely agree with your second paragraph. Disagree with the previous poster who said most are buying counterfeit or smuggled. I've only seen one pack of counterfeit (Palace in a red box if you're wondering) in my entire life and that was stereotypically when I was on the North Side chatting to a fella back when I smoked.

I read that governments didn't want to tax unrolled tobacco too much because of how easily it's concealed compared to a box of smokes but apparently they're revising that strategy now that so many people are on the Amber Leaf. Time will tell how that goes.

A tax on fools.

Intelligent people don't care how much they cost.

With everything we know about smoking, you'd want to be an absolute fucking idiot to start.