The title of this post is clearly a bad pun that refers to a no matter how you reckon it lesser Beck jam. But if we keep calling into question the parameters of the task itself, how can we ever complete the task? Even start it?

You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this: a bodega at nine am in the heart of Queens, trying to figure out the best value-for-nicotine ratio of the store’s not limited behind-the-counter offerings. So let me tell you. Most smokers are poor. I believe I could be wrong about this, but smoking or non is a great predictor—better than you’re self-identification as, say, red or blue—of your income level. I imagine there’s also a correlation between education and smoking, and education and income. I’m one of those educated smokers, though. I’m also poor. Well, it feels like it. I’m probably not that poor.

Anyway, even if I were extravagantly wealthy, I’d still be a price shopper. I’ve noticed after the latest round of vice taxes in New York City that the cigarettes I smoke cost about $12. Sometimes you can get them for $11, though. As a baseline, Marlboros cost like $10 or $11 everywhere. So I’m at the bodega this morning trying to figure out what to buy. Should I get a pack of American Spirits? (That’s my brand.) Those are $12. But you only get 20, so that’s not a great deal. You know what’s only a dollar more? Dunhills! Dunhill makes one of the best widely-available-in-the-US tobacco products. Seriously nice, robust, good-tasting, slow-burning. They’re like American Spirits but better. And they are now only a dollar more. That’s crazy. Where I’m from, American Spirits are like $7 now, and Dunhills are still like $10 to $12. So the price difference is practically nothing. It’s like the taxes increased, and store owners just brought up the cheapest-priced cigarettes without raising the ‘luxury’ cigarettes. The more interesting thing is that rolling tobacco, which used to cost a lot less than pre-made cigarettes, and later came to cost more, now cost less again. So I got a package of American Spirit rolling tobacco for $11—a dollar less than a pack of them. The 40g package yields about twice as many cigarettes.

I don’t know if taxing tobacco results in a lower adoption rate. I suspect it does, but not in an obvious way. To call back an example of Wittgenstein’s, the man falling over the side of the boat doesn’t cause me to jump in to save him. At least, not in the same way that applying 100C degrees of heat to water causes it to boil. And not, again, in the (differently) same way that my hypothalamus causes me to feel thirst. It is, I think, a great secular example of the ought-is dichotomy. Obviously, legislation is the will of the body of the country that tries to map isometrically its desires. But it’s a kind of sham will, I think, because it counts on the principles of desert and punishment—negative impulses. The real sea change in smoking cessation has to do with positive impulses, impulses that I have. For now, though, I’d prefer to smoke. And I prefer to smoke in a market made up of options: Do I want to spend a lot on high-end cigarettes like Dunhills? Do I want to go the worse-tasting, DIY route of hand-rolled cigarettes? Marlboros or American Spirits? Spirits are definitely a better cigarette, so they should cost more. This taxing the hell out of tobacco shit has made everything cost basically the same. It seems like the opposite of a market-driven plan to influence consumer spending. I don’t like it. I’m poor and I’m educated, and I’d rather make my own decisions within the realm of tobacco-buying that don’t all involve me being even poorer. Start taxing stock trades or something. Just let me smoke and pay rent in peace.