Comments
Gavi's investment opportunity for 2026-2030 says they expect to save 8 to 9 million lives, for which they would require a budget of at least $11.9 billion[1]. Unfortunately, Gavi only raised $9 billion, so they have to make some cuts to their plans[2]. And you really can't reduce spending by $3 billion without making some life-or-death decisions.
Gavi's CEO has said that "for every $1.5 billion less, your ability to save 1.1 million lives is compromised"[3]. This would equal a marginal cost of $1,607 $1,363 per life saved, which seems a bit low to me. But I think there is a good chance Gavi's marginal cost per life saved is still cheap enough to clear GiveWell's cost-effectiveness bar. GiveWell hasn't made grants to Gavi, though. Why?
The UK is set to pass a law that bans the sale of tobacco to anyone born after 2008. Once the king signs it into law, the UK will become the second country in the world to introduce a generational smoking ban, after the Maldives did so last November. (New Zealand also considered such a ban a few years ago, but did not go through with it.)
Here’s the data from Australia:
(FMC: Factory Made Cigarettes; RYO: Roll Your Own)
Australia instituted a full vaping ban in 2024 to combat the rise in total nicotine use, which had been trending toward before 2020. It’s a little early to tell, but a similar rise in taxation for cigarettes seems to have really pumped up the illicit market because the price of illegal cigarettes inverted below the price of legal ones. Anecdotally, there are way more drugstores than before that are straight up selling illegal cigarettes, and enforcement has been lacking.
I think this kind of generational ban can be done, but governments need to strictly enforce and tamp down on the underground market. I don’t know what the right policies are here.
First, to be clear, I am not saying illicit tobacco trade does not exist. It certainly does and is a problem.
But when it comes to tobacco, it helps to always be a bit paranoid about every claim that you hear. Big Tobacco does often argue that raising taxes / making laws more stringent is risky, because it could lead to increased illicit trade. But this argument does not actually hold up. Illicit cigarette sales in the UK over the last few decades:
When it comes to Australia: well, it does seems that the article I linked above does not really hold up here, right? Australia does have a massive problem with illicit sales. Now, there certainly are some former law enforcement officers often appearing on Australian media who say that the only way to deal with this problem is that the tax should be lowered. Sounds reasonable, right? Well, turns out that they are usually funded by Big Tobacco, even if they don't disclose it.
I am no expert on the best way to crack down on illicit trade, but I do believe that if the UK could deal with this issue, so can Australia, if it tries harder. I do wonder if lobbying for more funding / helping the AU government come up with novel ways to solve this problem could be an effective intervention. I do not believe that the correct answer to this problem is that we should just give up and let the tobacco companies get the excise lowered. Tobacco taxes are the most effective way to drive behaviour change, after all.
It also feels like smugglers helping regular smokers get discounts on their habit are the wrong model, since the target for the ban is young people who generally don't [yet]have a smoking addiction. Basically everyone else buys cigarettes legally in convenience stores and teenagers already barely smoke them with the trend being steeply downwards since the turn of the century. Kids who don't have a smoking habit and increasingly aren't interested in trying are barely a demand factor for underground cigarettes, especially since they can also obtain them by asking an older person to purchase it in a regular convenience store, same as 15 year olds wanting to experiment with cigarettes and alcohol have done for years. .
It's just it places more of a barrier to them getting it regularly in quantities likely to become habit-forming, and ultimately apart from being highly addictive when people do that tobacco doesn't have much appeal as a drug, offering minimal high and being something grandma smokes and teen idols don't, so it really doesn't seem like something that a few years down the line is going to result in speakeasies full of chainsmoking twentysomethings or a new sideline for dealers in cocaine.
Yes, sorry, I should be clear I am arguing for new tobacco legislation to be paired with stronger enforcement, and not for new tobacco legislation to be avoided.
I notice myself feeling negative towards these laws.
This isn't even an absolute rejection on my part, I'm just worried that governments are sliding too much towards paternalism without properly considering the downsides of their legislation.
I do agree that every ban should be well-justified and well thought out. I think it is worth noting that this law has been two years in the making. They have received written evidence from 88 different stakeholders, most of whom are Big Tobacco or Big Vape backed organizations.
Honestly, I think the big problem with the bill is that they only applied the generational ban to cigarettes; vaping and other nicotine products will still be available to them.EDIT: Turns out the law bans both cigarettes and vapes.EDIT2: Only cigarettes will be banned. Some outlets seem to have mistakenly reported that vapes are included in the generational ban.(Protecting civil liberties is a popular argument for Big Tobacco / Vape lobbyists to use against stricter laws. )