No way to measure this though short of blood tests and i cant see smokers agreeing to one of those every morning before work.

You can stink of smoke and not be impared. Likewise however you can stink of alcohol and be unimpaired/under all legal limits.

You do when they dont pay enough to actually cover the costs as is the case with smoking.

Very expensive medical care can be needed for 10-20 YEARS for some smoking related illnesses. On an individual basis this costs more than they've contributed in taxes meaning other people who choose not to self harm end up paying to cover that cost.

I searched two days ago and found plenty, I mean: real floods of varying data concerning how much tax income the sales of cigarettes produce for the state in Germany, England and America, and how much of the health care costs are related to treatment of smoking-related diseases. There is great variation in the data given, unfortunately, which makes it hard to nail it down to two single numbers.

The taxes are estimated the higher the more pro-smoking lobbying the site is doing. Sites related to the tobacco industry count them as signbificantly higher than others.

There is also no stable estimation on health costs produced by smoking, at least not on the many sites I googled. The values also are hugely varying, more for Europe, than for America, which seems to have better data available both on taxes and health costs. Sure is that we talk about several billions per nation. the problem could be that opinions vary in when to conclude that a disease if caused by smoking. More intense long time care at high age due to a living with smoking also is hard to be defined in precise numbers. There are a number of disease where the link between smoking and desease is very obvious (lunge cancer, limb amoutations), in other cases we need to think more in terms of a given disease having an increased risk for outbrake (certain types of cardiovascular diseases)

But a trend can be clearly formulated: the relation between tax income and smoking-related health cost. The health costs are multiple times higher than the procuded tax income. The relation varies, according to the data from mutiple sites between 1:4 and 1:10.

that means that by selling cigarettes, the state accepts related costs to the health system that are at minimum 4 times higher than the produced tax income. It could be as much as 10 times higher.

Which makes it kind of absurd for the state to legalize cigarettes on the ground of arguing with the tax income for the state. The fact that the tobacco-taxes do not go directly into the health system, but into the tax pot in general and from their got distributed for multiple purposes, seems to have a very strong deceiving effect. Not to mention the actoive lobby work by the industry: which in germany just had managed to weaken up planned and quite rigid anti-smokeing-laws successfully again - although after long negotiations the parties agreed on a very tough course before. It got loosened up by private relations of authorities from Länder-ebene with representatives of the tobacco-lobby, while the federal government's great coalition exactly wanted to prevent these backdoors..

Solution: do a count of how high smoke-related health costs in your nation has been last year. Divide the health costs by the number of packages that got sold over that year, and you have the tax value you need to add to the price of each package in order to make tobacco taxes compensating for the fincial damage smoking does to the health system.

The prices for cigarettes will skyrocket into the air. :up: the tax per package will be several times as high than the actual price set by the tobacco industry.

repeat this procedure every or every second year. Experience shows that the connsumation by smokers of opportunity and light and medium addicts goes down the higher the prices become. When Germany rasied the taxes over the last years, it suddenly had tax incomes going down, due to less packages being sold.

If then you smoke in private rooms only, not in public buildings, restaurants, bars, and not when you are raising children, then it is your private business only indeed, and people like me will not complain. Becasue the children are defensless and need to be protected from the stupidity of irresponsible parents, and if they develope long-time disease due to their parents smoking (asthma, concentration deficits, allergic reactions, damage to the immune system and others being real problems), smoking again would do damage to the public treasury. Not to mention the damage to the child.

I was wondering about the relation between taxes and health costs, Skybird and gnirtS seem to back up what I suspected. However, another question, besides creating restrictions to discourage smoking and protect others from its effects (not ban it of course)...I would be in favour of "natural" tobacco. I suspect a lot of harm is done by additives the industry has mixed in (as is the case with the food industry frankly) and would support a ban on their use. :hmm:

That is true as to my knowledge, the many additives are doing a great ammount of harm. I remember to have red a longer while ago that certain light-cigarettes include even more various poisons, than the original brand (that'S why the EU has prohibited the use of names like "Brandname Light". Many of these addditives are not there for "taste", but to increase the efficieny of the nicotine, so that the smokers becomes an addict faster. Two months ago there was also a report from a medical university that was able to show that the increase of tar and nicotine in cigarettes is not due to natuzral fluctuations in a natural product, but was increased intentuionally by th eindustry, to compensate for expected losses due to raising taxes. These companies intentionally turn people into junkey depending on them. They are dealers, all of them, and should be locked behind iron bars.

However, natural tobacco also include significant levels of tar and nicotine.

I defend the zero promille rule, concerning alcohol and car driving. The organism reacts differently from day to day, and every man is different from all others. If you plan to drive, don't drink. Clean, clear solution, everybody understand there is no optional exception from the rule, it is the most safest. Why not having a rule like that with tobacco, too? especially when we are hypocritical. Cannabis has it's risks, yes, but it is not as harmful and causes us much, much lesser health costs than cigarettes. Or even white sugar! Moden society is pleagued and poisened by "foods" that better should carry a skull-and-bones emblem in their name: white flour, bad fats, bad oils, way to much salt, white sugar, gene-food being highly suspicious and animals in experiemnts becoming sick from it ... No wonder that there are more and more fat people, young kids already suffering from obesity and cannot stand on one foot for a minute and even cannot walk backwards, health costs for such things exploding, and diabetes becomeing the new most widespread disease amongst all "civilisational diseases". Add to this the lack of excersising (I admit the older I get the more I am guilty of this myself...).

"Natural" contains 300-400 various compounds, a % of which are known to be carcinogens or other health hazards. Some are still unknown. Just because it grows naturally doesn't mean its safe to burn and sniff.

Yes tobacco companies of late have artificially increased the tar and nicotine percentages to keep people addicted and smoke more but even without that the things are one massive list of compounds you dont want in your body.

I never said it's good to smoke of course, heck too much bugs me in springtime, and we know there are loads of plants and things in nature that are poisonous yet natural. Just saying why add to it, plus as you mentioned companies adding stuff to make smoking more addictive. :nope:

I know one Welshman who is returning to Wales to have a good puff and stick to fingers up to the law, thats the guy who owns the local paper shop near me.

I wonder if he will get life. ;)

Let me know where so i can report him :)

I have no idea where abouts in Wales he will be this weekend.

Yeah, well assylum seekers and immigrants come to a country, they have paid nothing, not a cent, yet they get state support and such forth for as long as it takes. Yet the rest of the population has to pay to support them. So why not smokers then who have been paying all their lives, and the close family who have paid all their lives?

The trouble is, what you and skybird propose, make the smoker pay for their treatments can be took to the extreme. Somebody will come along and say, "lets not bother to treat smokers at all!" Then what? What about befrore that, them who need treatment and cannot afford to pay? Are they just left to die? You say, very sorry, you don't deserve treatment.

[quote=Penelope_Grey]I fail to see what asylum seekers and immigrants (i assume you mean ILLEGAL immigrants) has to do with smoking ?! The UK like most other countries is signed up to treaties regarding asylum seekers and yes the UK law is extremely laxed and poorly enforced but thats not relevent to the smoking debate at all. People legitimately seeking political asylum have good reason to be here if fleeing persecution and so on. Most have nothing. Its not related at all to the debate. Legal immigrants pay for themselves, illegal immigrants should be deported ASAP but b'liars government wont do it. So tax money goes towards paying for people who have had to flee their country for their lives but i fail to see why it should go to people who have just chosen to self harm and are now experiencing the consequences (ie smokers).


Im not against that. You pay for what you do. I have to carry insurance for such things for sports, other at risk groups also have to carry insurance. In short, by accepting an elevated risk you pay a financial penalty for that to ensure medical treatment. Smokers put themselves at a far higher risk than just about any other group so should be charged as such, maybe force them to pay an extra insurance tax as such. Again, i dont see why people should pay for someone elses deliberate self-harm.

Well, ok... you propose make smokers pay for their medical treatment because its not fair to make the system pay for them. yes? I say... if the system can pay for assylum seekers, who have not paid a cent into the system, yet can claim their way to everything. Then we should look after the smokers too.

Of course you don't, because you don't share the same view on equality of people, despite the faults, as I do. My grandmother would have been dead a long time ago if she was forced to pay for her treatment of smoking relatied illnesses, because she would never have been able to afford insurances or even payment of costs, she is a typical example of a poor pensioner in britain.

But it isn't even as simple as you are suggesting, why would an insurance company want to cover a smoker if the system is not prepared to assist either?

Slight difference. (i) there are international binding treaties on asylum of what HAS to be done which the UK has to obey. Secondly theres a hell of a difference than someone fleeing their country for fear of persecution or death who have absolutely nothing attempting to get away from it to someone with resources, money, freedom who simply chooses to smoke. The first group of people have no choice, the second have and make a choice. Nobody is forcing them to smoke. Nobody is going to kill or beat them if they dont.


Equal in that everyone pays their own way. Thats fine. If someone makes a deliberate choice that is nothing more than personal pleasure that greatly increases their cost to everyone then they should pay for that. Other increased risk sports and groups have to pay expensive insurance. Smokers dont but should. Paying large amounts of money to subsidise someone elses lifestyle choice shouldnt happen. In short, people should pay for what they cost and not expect or in your case demand others support them in that.

Who is aware of the cost, damage it causes and still chooses to do it. 40 years ago then nobody know of the dangers. These days people do. Nobody is forced to smoke, nobody will suffer if they dont smoke. Its a personal choice. If someone makes that choice everyone should be forced to pay for it.
Otherwise its extremely unfair on others who chose not to abuse themselves paying over the odds and therefore getting less money for their own life just to subsidise others.

Im sure if the costs are evened out you could find a policy for £700 a year or so that would cover the average costs vs risk for a smoker. Of course, maybe nobody will insure them. That means they have to pay for their own costs. Thats fine. Again, nobody forced them to smoke, by choosing to do so they should accept the extra cost towards looking after them and not demand others do it for them.

Congratulations. Soon we will have some laws here that will do the same thing.

I used to hate going to bars and then having to bag my clothing up because of the stink :(