Shops exist to trade goods and are no betting station for the state or agency for collecting money from those doing something just because of doing it. The primary function of a shop is not to collect the tax on the goods it dispenses. Shops are not centres for collecting taxes from smokers and they should not have become that. To all those raising the tax on tobacco and cigarettes we say: Shops are not for collecting taxes, they are for trading goods! Or to make it more clear, shops are not for you to collect your tax based on the customers’ choices.
Cigarettes should not cost more than they are worth or more than they cost to produce, plus some margin for profit and tax. SOME margin for tax DOES NOT mean the vast majority of the price. Taxes should be collected fairly and evenly from all citizens just in the way they are being distributed.
We do not live in the middle ages anymore when knights used to raid smokers and deprive them of their fortune and wealth to tax the villagers for the king. Meaning that just because somebody smokes this does not mean that they should be robbed of their fortune.
Tobacco taxes that are excessively high that exist in Australia and the UK, in New Zealand and Canada, in France and New York and in Ireland and anywhere else in the world constitute stealing when robbing smokers of their money to buy something that has only cost a minimal part of the money they are exchanging, since they have donated the vast majority of the price to the tax authorities, for making a selection which should have been free to exert from a choice, and stealing constitutes an offence just like pushing away the person who is next to you because they smoke, want to smoke or happen to smoke constitutes another offence.
Bring Back Smoking Freedom 