What would happen if Americans stopped smoking?

[outofplace]

One section that leaped off the page to me: "The end of smoking would even ripple as far as corporate philanthropy. Between 1997 and 2005, the tobacco industry made over $143 million in charitable donations."

Isn't the tobacco industry as a whole profitable to the tune of billions upon billions? So over eight years they donated about $18 mil per year? I'm quite unimpressed.

The recipients of that philanthropy are probably impressed. Remember, in order for those folks to give $18M a year to charity, there have to be charitable organizations willing to take the money...

Careful you don't dislocate your shoulder with that reach. Got one actual example of a charity refusing their money? You might find a few, but I'm guessing the real limit is how much they want to give. They do enough to try to clean up their image, but not much compared to what the industry makes.

My point was that the charitable organizations that took the reported $18M per year had to be sufficiently appreciative of the money to take it - - or they would have rejected it. I am sure that some charities do not take "tobacco money"; I would suspect that the American Lung Association would not take money from the Marlboro Man but I don't know that for sure.

Giving to charity is done for lots of reasons - - only one of which is to gain favorable recognition within a community. I think it is quite a stretch for anyone to judge the motivation(s) of any donor and an even bigger stretch to suppose that someone can determine how much a donor ought to give to charities.

According to this report tobacco companies give $18M a year to charities. That is a good thing. It does not justify the tobacco industry but it is still a good thing. Presumably, the charities did positive things with the money...

Still not an impressive number when weighed against the profits that industry brings in, especially when you realize that they make that money by selling a product that is not only incredibly damaging to the health of the people they sell it to, but also to those around them.

 

[waterytart]

Hey, if every smoker and soft-drink drinker signs a pledge to be eaten by lions by their 50th birthday, I'd be all for giving them a waiver on these sin taxes. Otherwise, pony up, forkers.

I think the lions are hanging in there. Maybe we should slather the smokers in fish oil and feed them to the polar bears.

 

[hondo]

These kinds of adjustments take time.
If you put American tobacco out of business, of course there would be an immediate negative impact.

Tens of thousands of those out of work would be hired in other fields in the current economic environment?
The loss of sales tax, income tax, corporate tax would be covered immediately by the savings realized?

Putting an end to American tobacco would have a negative economic effect. In normal to good times, it's weatherable. Conditions will correct themselves. People young enough to do so will retrain and go into other jobs. State and federal programs tied to tobacco-tax funding will go away or be given other revenue streams. The 20 percent of American spending money on tobacco will reintroduce that money into the economy.
Things correct themselves over time.

In the current economic condition, there's not a lot of wiggle room.

Good reasonable points. But I can't believe we're arguing about the economic positives or negatives of tobacco being non-existent and no one's brought up this point: anything that has killed millions of people and will kill millions more is a bad thing. A very bad thing.