[Wuli]

“Deborah Cohen, a physician and public health researcher with the RAND Corporation, suggests that some of the policies we use to control alcohol consumption could help beat back obesity.”

We regulate the sale of alcoholic beveridges, and do very little to control actual consumption of them, except on the fringes.

People in the United States have very little problem obtaining the amount of aclcoholic beveridges they wish to consume. The assumption to the contrary in the Rand study is wrong.

[aruanan]

Could alcohol-regulation policies tame U.S. obesity epidemic?

Encourage people to smoke. That will have three effects:

1. it will tame the U.S. obesity problem,

2. it will result in a LOT of money being collected in SS and other taxes throughout the productive life of the smoker, but not have to be paid back since the shortened life span of a smoker is usually due to death during retirement earlier than non-smokers, so that smokers, along with black males, will be net contributors to, but not recipients of, the SS program.

3. it will raise a crap-load of tax revenue in a way that can't be done with taxes on food, which would be indiscriminate. A tax on tobacco would target exactly those who use it, not those who don't.

So this way we're shifting one set of illnesses toward another but later in life. This keeps a higher level of tax-revenue generating going over a longer period of time (including the tobacco taxes after retirement until the statistically earlier deaths due to lung cancer and emphysema), reduces the pay out of Social Security, and reduces the total amount of food eaten (which increases food supply).