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Doctors vote for ban on UK cigarette sales to those born after 2000

One Thousand Words said:
You are assuming that I want all drugs to be legalised. I don't. I have coped fine for over 20 years working in a black market and can only see mayhem if the majority of society were allowed unfetted access to harder drugs.

It is incorrect to argue that tobacco excises/taxes is higher than health costs. In Australia taxes collected from tobacco is approximately $6 billion where as health costs relating to smoking is well above $30 billion. I don't see why the rest of the world would be any different.

http://www.tobaccoinaustralia.org.au/chapter-17-economics/17-2-the-costs-of-smoking
Click to expand...

I thought the same thing - costs to healthcare cannot possibly be covered by tobacco taxes in the US. Right?
Do you have some source for that statement, OpiAmp? I would be interested.

One Thousand Words- don't you think that alcohol is also one of the "harder" drugs? Would life involve more mayhem if heroin were also legal? All the users of illegal heroin would certainly have less mayhem in their lives. Alcoholics that What about if heroin, but not alcohol, were legal? More mayhem? Just curious to hear your thoughts. I did cherry-pick my example, using a drug that is quite safe but with a bad reputation.
I am not a fan of the effects of meth or crack, and would be very nervous if they were legal, but with other, safer alternatives legal I hope and believe that the number of users would drop.
 
The sources I have are about the UK but the concept applies to all high tobacco tax nations. They definitely reap handsome profits from the deaths of smokers. The government just puts a spin on costs. Consider the fact that everyone will get sick and cost the government money as they age anyway combined with the fact that smokers die earlier and therefore do not receive as many government benefits over time and you have your answer.

“smoking is the largest single cause of preventable illness and premature death in the UK. It kills 106,000 people every year and costs the British taxpayer more than £1.7billion a year in treatment bills alone. It causes 84 per cent of deaths from lung cancer and 83 per cent of deaths from chronic obstructive lung disease, including
bronchitis”

So

Smoking “costs the British taxpayer more than £1.7billion a year in treatment bills”
(from this article)

And from elsewhere on the internet:

“Most of the expenditure of The Department of Health (£98.7 billion in 2008-9[4]) is spent on the NHS.”
(from Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_He...(England)

And

UK Tax revenue from tobacco products - £10 billion (approx)
From tma website
http://www.the-tma.org.uk/tobacco-tax-re...

So
NHS costs - £100 billion
Smoking makes the government £10 billion
Smoking costs – £2 billion

I know there are other issues to be added to this balance sheet, many of which are beyond financial. However, from my point for view, I know what I am going to be saying to the people who claim that I am costing them money from smoking.
 
^^ More recent figures suggest the figure is closer to £5 billion

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8086142.stm

EDIT:

And this would seem to explain the discrepancy between the UK and Australian figures - the UK stats refer solely to the cost to the direct cost to NHS whereas the Australian figures are a more comprehensive total cost to the economy (excuse the line breaks, I can't be arsed editing them out ;)):

Research carried out by
Oxford University estimated that
smoking cost the NHS in the UK £5.2
billion in 2005/06, approximately 5.5%
of total healthcare costs 4 . This
updates the estimated cost of between
£1.4 billion and £1.5 billion a year,
estimated by research carried out by
the Centre for Health Economics at the
University of York 5 in 1998. It is
important to consider that these are
costs of treating smoking-related
illnesses and do not include costs
related to working days lost or social
security ill health payments for
example, nor do they include any
costs related to the effects of second-
hand smoking.

http://www.hscic.gov.uk/catalogue/PUB11454/smok-eng-2013-rep.pdf (PDF)

Here's a more comprehensive breakdown of the TOTAL cost to the UK economy from smoking - this is much more in line with the stats cited by onethousandwords

Research commissioned by ASH in 2010 has shown that the cost to the NHS of treating
diseases caused by smoking is approximately £2.7 billion a year. 6 Another study put the
estimated cost as high as £5.2 billion. 7 A report by the Policy Exchange in 2010 estimated the
total cost to society of smoking to be £13.74 billion. This includes the £2.7bn cost to the NHS
but also the loss in productivity from smoking breaks (£2.9bn) and increased absenteeism
(£2.5bn). Other costs include: cleaning up cigarette butts (£342 million), the cost of fires
(£507m), the loss of economic output from the death of smokers (£4.1bn) and passive smokers
(£713m). 8 However, it is also estimated that about £380 million a year is being saved by the
NHS as a result of public health strategies such as the ban on tobacco advertising and the
creation of the stop smoking services which have resulted in fewer people smoking. 6

(...)

The Treasury earned £9.5 billion in revenue from tobacco duties in the financial year 2011-
2012 (excluding VAT). 17 This amounts to 2% of total Government revenue. Including VAT at
an estimated £2.6bn, total tobacco revenue was £12.1bn. 18 The price of a pack of 20 premium
brand cigarettes currently costs around £7.98, of which £6.17 (77%) is tax. 19

https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&...=zeEU0fde35PfNGl0W-FKLw&bvm=bv.69837884,d.dGI
 
Last edited:
_DankOpiAmp_ said:
I knew it came from the ultra-cheap fertilizer they used's synthesis.
Click to expand...

In the interest of pedantry... ;)

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/03/13/3451931.htm

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The radioactive metal in cigarettes is polonium-210. It was discovered in 1898 by Marie and Pierre Curie. It is extremely toxic (about 250-million-times more toxic than cyanide) and is naturally present in uranium.

Developed countries use fertiliser that is manufactured from apatite rock, and this rock naturally contains uranium which then decays to radioactive polonium-210, which enters the tobacco plant through both the leaves and roots.

When the cigarette burns, it reaches temperatures of 600–800°C, hotter than the melting point of polonium.

The liquefied polonium sticks to tiny particles in the cigarette smoke, and then preferentially lands at locations in your airways and lungs, where one pipe splits into two pipes.

Polonium-210 has a very short half-life of 138 days. It is intensely radioactive, and sprays alpha particles on to the surrounding tissues.

Now, most people would be definitely worried if you suggested that they have a chest x-ray every day for the rest of their lives. But some of these people quite happily smoke, sometimes up to two packets of cigarettes every day.

Cigarette smoke is already loaded with various chemicals that are well-known to cause cancer. It's estimated that the radiation dose from the polonium-210 in cigarettes accounts for about two per cent of cigarette deaths. That is several thousand deaths each year in the USA alone.
 
First they take your guns then they come for your cigs. F that bull mess I would be upset if I were a 14 year old red coat. Government is trying to limit their potential future life choices.
 
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