What does it take to get people to stop smoking? The State Secretary for Health, Welfare and Sport, Maarten van Ooijen, seems to think the answer is to increase the price of cigarettes — quite considerably!
Van Ooijen did his homework. According to a recent study, smokers are more likely to give up their dangerous habit if they’re faced with terribly unaffordable cigarette prices.
That’s why the state secretary wants to make sure that the price of a pack of those delicious health hazards goes up, the NOS reports.
To what exactly? Just a casual €40 by 2040! 🤯
What’s the plan?
The plan is to make it a slow but steady process toward what the Dutch cabinet has called “a smoke-free generation” within the next 20 years.
To achieve this ambitious goal, it has already been decided that the price of a pack of cigarettes in the Netherlands first will increase from €8 to €10 by 2025.
However, Van Ooijen wants to add to this plan. He suggests that the price for a pack should increase by €2 every single year.
The end goal is simple: prices would then rise until we reach the aesthetic “€40 by 2040” benchmark. 💶
Whether or not this will actually happen, however, is yet to be decided. The Council of Ministers has yet to consider Van Ooijen’s ambitious additions.
READ MORE | Dutch train stations to become completely smoke-free
What’s the goal?
It is no secret that smoking is bad for you, so it’s quite puzzling that 20% of Dutchies still do it. If his freshly developed master plan is realised, Van Ooijen hopes that this number will have fallen to as low as 7% by 2040.
It would also look good for the Netherlands if Van Ooijen gets his way. Implementing such strict price regulations would put the country in the EU lead when it comes to smoking laws.
Will it work?
It’s not easy to say how effective van Ooijen’s plan will be. A previous study already established that the price of a pack of cigarettes needs to be as high as €60 for the most persistent smokers to change their lifestyles.
But who knows, perhaps it will help guide some people in the right direction — or at least influence a few more to lean further into their caffeine addiction instead. ☕️
If nothing else, being strict on smoking is a good optic for a State Secretary of Health, Welfare, and Sports, so the law won’t be totally useless either way.
Is €40 for a pack of cigarettes too much to be worthwhile? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!
