Since the beginning of the 21st century, quitting smoking has become a prevalent social agenda. Technological fixes have been invested in, and now the government has taken action as well. Since 2002, cigarettes and cigars have had a huge tax increase. Ten-pack cartons that cost $49, now cost $58. This change didn’t happen over a matter of years, but rather a matter of weeks. Federal government has decided to increase taxes on cartons to $6.16 a carton, or $1.01 for each pack of cigarettes. And that is just on the federal level.
States have taken this Social Engineering approach to quitting cigarettes into their own hands as well. In the state of New York, one of the most avid taxing states on cigarettes, made an average pack of cigarettes worth $9.20. If you’re in Manhattan, add almost another two dollars, making the average pack about $11. This is to help fund the $71.6 million for research on cancer in Buffalo. The government’s proposal is that these spiked hikes in cigarette prices will help give people the initiative to quit smoking, and allow these funds to be used to research other methods to stop and cure cancers created by cigarette smoking.
Have all of these tax spikes helped people quit? Possibly. In 1998, 39.2% of Native Americans smoked, and as of 2009, only 23.2% did. This was the most dramatic decrease in cigarette use, but every ethnicity has decreased their cigarette use in the last decade or so. Although other variables come into play, like the amount of PSAs created to cigarette use and other technological fixes for the problem, state legislation’s social engineering approaches have been working in decreasing the amount of cigarette use.
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