army1987 comments on Prediction is hard, especially of medicine - Less Wrong
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Most people don't spend their own money on saving their grandparents, they spend other people's money. Don't act surprised that other people's willingness to throw tens of millions at your grandfather's last year is not unlimited.
Also if people really cared about how long other people in their country lived, total cigarette ban would be a super simple and super cheap way to start (especially since e-cigarettes are an existing and viable low-cancer substitute - people want the psychoactive bits not the tar). And trans fat ban - or at least strict labeling requirement (which would amount to the same, since nobody want that, and trans fats don't have any special taste or anything, they're just industrial poison in food). Or throwing some money at making roads safer (most accidents happen on small fraction of bad spots). And in countless other ways. Throwing ridiculous amount of money at people when they're oldest is stupid way to achieve an already stupid goal.
IAWYC, but
I don't think that would work. Marijuana is already illegal but people smoke it anyway, and the war against it costs lots of money.
I've heard that lots of people start smoking for signalling purposes (some people even claim it's the only reason why anyone starts smoking at all), and I'm not sure e-cigarettes would send exactly the same signals.