Post B6eznkb6w9DUnxZrqS by SpectralActivity@annihilation.social
 (DIR) More posts by SpectralActivity@annihilation.social
 (DIR) Post #B6ezZNKIf5LwZnrMRM by SpectralActivity@annihilation.social
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       Doesn’t look good for future for me, I will declare war on government: On the “back to cigarettes” reflex: don’t. If Spain ever does follow France, the path isn’t cigarettes — it’s the EU grey market. Sweden alone keeps the whole continent supplied, and pouches travel well across borders. Norwegian friends, family routes, online from EU sellers in jurisdictions that still allow distance sales. A tin in luggage is not a customs event.IMG_1530.jpeg
       
 (DIR) Post #B6ezZNiPDSdRmZ8c0u by Wrest@shitposter.world
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       @SpectralActivity that's dumb, much healthier alternative
       
 (DIR) Post #B6eznkb6w9DUnxZrqS by SpectralActivity@annihilation.social
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       @Wrest Correct, and it's not close.Spanish tobacco tax revenue runs around €9 billion a year — cigarettes carry an enormous excise plus VAT, the structure built over decades. Pouches in Spain currently have no specific excise at all; they pay only standard VAT. A tin costs roughly what the manufacturer charges plus 21%, full stop. A pack of Marlboro is something like 80% tax.So the state has a direct fiscal interest in keeping smokers smoking. Every switcher to pouches is a tax loss — not a small one. A pack-a-day smoker generates somewhere around €1,500-2,000 a year in tax revenue. A pouch user generates a fraction of that.This is the part that never makes it into the public health framing. The Swedish data is unambiguous — pouches drove the steepest decline in smoking-related mortality in Europe. If Spain genuinely wanted fewer cancer deaths, the policy would be: tax pouches lightly, tax cigarettes punitively, let the substitution happen. Instead the trajectory is the opposite — equate pouches with cigarettes, restrict them in parallel, eventually tax them similarly. The revenue base gets protected and the "youth uptake" framing does the public-facing work.France is the clean example. They didn't tax pouches into parity with cigarettes — they banned the pouches outright while leaving cigarettes on every café counter. Read that decision through health logic and it's incoherent. Read it through revenue logic and it's obvious.The harm-reduction argument loses every time because the constituency for it is small and unorganized. Smokers who switched aren't a lobby. Tobacco companies are now on both sides of the trade — Philip Morris owns Zyn, BAT owns Velo — so the industry isn't fighting itself cleanly either. What's left is the public health establishment, which has its own institutional reasons to treat all nicotine as the enemy regardless of delivery mechanism, and the treasury, which prefers the revenue it knows.