[Karellen]

> If you ask me, such a targeted tax is a cruel double-tax on the individuals we are "punishing" for doing something "we" find morally-offensive, and have post-justified as a health-concern.

Citation? There was no _public_ issue (moral or medical) at all with smoking and cigarettes until the late '80s/early '90s. As far as I'm aware, the public concerns since then have been entirely based on increasing acceptance of the medical problems, as the smoking industry's efforts to manufacture doubt and controversy over the link finally began to wane. At least enough for the lawyers to be confident enough that they could defend against anti-business charges with clear medical facts that would actually stand up as a defense.

I'm also not aware of any actual moral threats that have been attributed even in the most tenuous possible way to smoking - I've not heard it claimed that it will make you more promiscuous, or likely to neglect your kids, or cause you to fail to hold down a job, or in any way hasten the moral downfall of civilisation. Not ever.

As for "punishing", I think it's more of a nudge[0]. The government just wants to make it as attractive as possible for people to stay healthy, without actually banning anything.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_theory

[hga]

"On June 12, 1957, then-Surgeon General Leroy Burney 'declared it the official position of the U.S. Public Health Service that the evidence pointed to a causal relationship between smoking and lung cancer.'" (see following link), and that 1964 saw the publication of Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the United States (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoking_and_Health:_Report_of_...).

I was born in 1960; let me assure you there were strong and effective campaigns against smoking based on health through the time I went to college in 1979 and stopped paying so much attention to this sort of thing. I cannot recall a single person denying that smoking was unhealthy (arguments for it were much more nuanced).

[zo1]

Sorry, the cigarettes were an example related to the OP's post. But I was more referring to drugs when talking about a "proposed" tax for them, rather than cigarettes/smoking.