The circular logic of bansturbation

As we well know, tobacco duty (and VAT on top of that) is way too high in the UK, it is past the top of the Laffer Curve but the bansturbators love it for the obvious reasons. Now, people only have limited budgets, and if you are one of of the twenty per cent who smoke, you have to cough up whatever a packet of cigarettes a day costs, whatever your level of income. So the more expensive cigarettes are, the less you have to spend on food and other stuff.

Bansturbators also love telling people how to spend their money, which is why there are always mumblings about giving welfare claimants food vouchers instead of cash, so that they are forced to spend a certain amount on food. The Truly Righteous, like Julie from Bradford combine the absurd with the vulgar and add two and two to make five, see last Friday's Metro (page 14):

Kids only starve because their parents prefer to buy cigarettes and alcohol. We should issue benefit tokens only redeemable on food items.

This idea received further support from Anon or Sheffield in today's Metro (also page 14):

If pupils are going to school hungry, perhaps food vouchers for poor families would be a way to comabt it. I bet many who say they can't afford food spend at least a fiver a day on cigarettese, which would buy milk and cereal for a week. I've no problem with helping the needy but much deprivation is due to parents not getting their priorities right.

Seeing as only a fifth of adults smoke, it's probably only a minority of children who "starve" because their parents smoke, so that knocks the first letter out of the park. And instead of bumping up tobacco duty (and VAT thereon) even higher to discourage that remaining hard core from smoking (and thereby, by the bansturbators' own admission, depriving their children of food), how about just dropping tobacco duty to an affordable level, so that a packet of twenty costs £3 or something? Few smokers would smoke more just because it's cheaper, and hey presto, they've more money to spend on food for their children.

If you follow their logic to its ultimate conclusion, it would be more effective to give everybody vouchers for cheap cigarettes, those who smoke will use them, and those who don't can choose between throwing them away or selling them in the grey market, and if getting breakfast into children's mouths with the minimum of faff is the top priority, why not provide them with free or very cheap breakfasts before school starts?