When it comes to taxing cigarettes, there’s rarely any opposition from lawmakers. “Sin taxes,” as they’re sometimes called, raise significant revenue for governments and are broadly deployed in the name of reducing rates of smoking—in the US, they’re particularly high in states like New York and Connecticut.
But rarely is the effect of these taxes studied on marginalized people with low incomes, who around the world smoke at the highest rates.
A study analyzing online media accounts of tobacco-related store robberies in New Zealand between 2009 and 2018 gives an idea of which communities the government is impacting the most by hiking cigarette prices year after year. The harms have been disproportionately aimed at the country’s Indigenous people.
“My concerns increased when I saw it was mainly Māori and Pacific Island males being implicated in the robberies, charged and imprisoned,” co-author Dr. Marewa Glover, the director of the Centre of Research Excellence: Indigenous Sovereignty & Smoking, told Filter.
Helen Redmond – Filter – 2021-08-30.
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