no, changing tax rates doesn't affect people's behaviour.

so, tax cuts don't create jobs. and, they don't increase gdp, either. nor will tax increases reduce carbon emissions - or smokers.

the idea that taxes affect behaviour is just a bunch of right-wing propaganda.

we've made good progress in reducing the number of smokers, here. but, it wasn't due to taxation. it was due to a combination of restrictive policies that made it hard to smoke, a lot of public health information and a lot of social coercion that rejected smokers as untouchables. we made smoking socially unacceptable - that is what worked.

personally, i'm strongly in favour of utilizing peer pressure as an informal mechanism of social control to carry out social engineering goals - and getting smoking out of apartment buildings would be a desirable end that peer pressure could be effectively used as a means for.

we're going to have to replicate this with marijuana smokers - and, god forbid, crack smokers, too.