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February 15, 2006
Slightly Overenthusiastic.
The Guardian announces something that no one else has noticed:
Parliament, so often maligned and so often ignorantly, has done itself and the nation proud by banning smoking in England.
Is this some provision of the Bill that I’ve missed?
You can tell where they want to go too:
There clearly was - and it is one that will pose even more difficult
dilemmas now that smoking remains legal only in private - where 95% of
all passive smoking cases occur.
One further thought:
Smoking is the single most preventable cause of death in this country. It kills 106,000 people every year in England.
And when smoking finally is banned, where are you going to get the money from? Not just the tax smokers pay but the money they save in pensions and health care as the give up the ghost early? Ready to fire a few Real Nappy Officers and Outreach Workers?
February 15, 2006 in Idiotarians | Permalink
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The Guardian rather overstates the case on the smoking ban. Parliament, so often maligned and so often ignorantly, has done... [Read More]
Tracked on Feb 15, 2006 10:18:55 AM
Comments
You assume that smoking declines in tandem with a ban, which is not necessarily going to be the case. The opposite appears to have occurred in Ireland. It appears now that many more young people are taking up smoking than quitting, it’s far easier to chat someone up outside a bar when they are separated from their pack and its one of the few ways we can publicly protest our disdain for the state so its rebellious and kinda cool again too.
Posted by: anon | Feb 15, 2006 11:22:03 AM
"You assume that smoking declines in tandem with a ban, which is not necessarily going to be the case. The opposite appears to have occurred in Ireland."
Absolute bollocks. See here:
http://tc.bmjjournals.com/preprint/tc13649.pdf
and here
http://www.ash.org.uk/html/publicplaces/html/irelandimpact.html
Posted by: Jim | Feb 15, 2006 11:36:47 AM
Shorter Tim: our government should kill people for money.
Tim adds: They do. Healthcare is rationed by queue.
Posted by: ajay | Feb 15, 2006 12:15:22 PM
And when smoking finally is banned, where are you going to get the money from?Come on now Tim, everyone knows that the government can raise income and corporation taxes as much as it likes, because tax raises don't do any harm to the economy and it's only right-wing zombies that suggest otherwise.
(I'm being ironic, but I suspect that most of the micromanaging tyrannophiles that voted in the smoking ban would agree what I just said, if they have ever given any thought to it whatsoever. Which I doubt).
Posted by: xj | Feb 15, 2006 12:43:59 PM
Government should not prevent people from killing themselves. If there's a buck in not doing it, so much the better.
Posted by: P. Froward | Feb 15, 2006 1:02:35 PM
The Irish Brewers Association reported a 6% drop in sales (quite similar to what JD Wetherspoon found) over the first 6 months of the ban, and for pubs with little option for outside facilities, this is reported to be worse.
I don't think many people realise how many country pubs are already close to being converted to private housing as it is. Take 6% off beer sales, and even more that switch.
Sadly, it won't be the anti-smoking-in-pubs people who will be affected. They are mostly occassional drinkers who will hardly miss their twice-annual trip down the local (the people I've asked who are anti- are almost universally in this group).
For those pubs that don't close, we'll see them become more like restaurants, as their regular clientele decide who smoke decide to stay at home instead.
Posted by: Tim Almond | Feb 15, 2006 1:07:30 PM
Tim, your view on the relationship between economics and demographics as expressed in different posts appears to be that children born in the Third World are always unambiguously positive contributors to the economy (and so there can never be any such thing as overpopulation and the Malthusians are always wrong) but citizens of the UK are a drag on the economy and have to be killed off by any means possible. The published figures on productivity really don't support this view.
Posted by: dsquared | Feb 15, 2006 2:19:02 PM
d2 - People don't die of lung cancer at a young age. If smokers die at 70 rather than 80, their productivity isn't much affected. Kids are worth more than old people in any society.
Posted by: P. Froward | Feb 15, 2006 6:55:28 PM
Tim, really.
Leaving aside civil liberties issues, your economic argument about banning smoking is nonsense. If people don't pay taxes because they don't or can't buy cigarettes then they will spend their money on something else and the government can tax these other things or adjust taxes overall to derive the same revenue.
And it is nonsense to suggest that you save money on healthcare because smokers tend to die earlier. This wrongly equates longevity to higher healthcare spending. So how come healthcare spending in Scotland per head is much higher than in England when the Scots are less healthy and die younger? The fact is that people with unhealthy lifestyles (smoking being a prime example) tend to live for more years of their shorter lifetimes with chronic conditions (which have to be expensively managed) than do those with healthier lifestyles. People with healthier lifestyles tend to live longer and then die having required far less medical treatment.
As for pensions, those with poor health (like smokers) are more likely to retire early, to have more time off work during their working lives and to require state sickness and other benefits and so they contribute less to pensions than those that are healthier. There is no evidence to suggest that smokers save taxpayers money in this respect.
Posted by: HJHJ | Feb 15, 2006 10:40:26 PM
In response to your point in the post about smokers dying earlier so being cheaper for the NHS. People who smoke have impaired health in a variety of ways (emphysemia, vitamin deficiencies, asthma, atherosclerosis, etc), so they cost the NHS a lot. I don't know whether anyone has done the comparison of costs to the NHS of treating people with non-fatal (or longstanding anyway) smoking-related diseases against the costs saved from some smokers dying earlier of lung cancer (in itself an expensive treatment) rather than later of something else.
Tim adds: There have been a number of such studies. Famously, Phillip Morris did one for the Czech Government. Kip Viscusi, an Economics Professor at Harvard did other similar research around the time of the US States suing the tobacco companies for Medicare costs.
In general, health systems save money by people dying of smokingand when you add in the pension system costs it is a no brainer.
Posted by: Petrona | Feb 16, 2006 10:36:17 AM
Tim,
This is nonsense. Have you ever read the Phillip Morris report produced in the Czech republic? I have. It is so full of obvious holes and fallacies that it is laughable and an insult to the intelligence of anyone with a brain. In fact, the conclusions it drew were subsequently renounced by Philip Morris and the head of Phillip Morris actually apologised for it. Viscusi's research has similarly been discredited, relying as it does, on surveys paid for by - you guessed it - tobacco companies.
You're wrong, Tim, and it would be better to stop digging now.
Tim adds: Yes, Ihave readit, and Viscusi’s work. No, I haven’t seen anything to make me think they are wrong. Mt readingof the PM withdrawal was that it was political: the furore meant the publicity led to the withdrawal.
As we know, smokers die on average seven years earlier than non. That’s a whole hunk of pension and health care money that doesn’t have to get spent. Whether I apporve of this or not is very different from whether it is actually true. Do smokers, in aggregate, cost the government more than they save it? I say yes and I’m delighted for you to come up with anything that proves me wrong. There’s something from the BMA out there I think, perhaps even referenced on this blog, which attempts to make the case that smokers cost morethan they save but I wasn’t convinced a couple of years ago when I read it.
Sorry, RCP. Royal College of Physicians. And no, I don’t trust their argument.
Posted by: HJHJ | Feb 16, 2006 11:57:20 AM
Come on Tim.
The Phillip Morris report is utter rubbish - many of its assumptions are so clearly biased towards its intended conclusions that it takes only a few minutes to refute them. The first time I read it I was simply aghast that they thought anyone could take it seriously. I am very surprised at you.
Again you make the completely unsubstantiated assumption that the fact that non-smokers live seven years longer on average means that they consume more 'healthcare'. Where is your evidence for this? You have none for the very simple reason that it is totally untrue. Recent reports in the press have drawn attention to the fact that the shorter life expectancy in Scotland (where they smoke more as well as eat worse) is also accompanied by a greater number of years living with chronic health conditions that in England - in other words, shorter lifetimes generally equate to greater healthcare cost, not the converse. And while people are living with chronic conditions (in Scotland on average, way before normal retirement age), there is a much smaller chance that they are contributing as much towards pensions, so the calculation on pensions is not at all clear.
You made the claim that banning or restricting smoking will cost us all money, so the onus is on you to substantiate this claim, which you have not done other than point to widely discredited reports. On the other hand it is quite easy to verify my statement that the healthier lifestyles associated with greater longevity save healthcare costs and do not increase them.
Posted by: HJHJ | Feb 16, 2006 11:09:19 PM
I would definitely not trust the conclusions of any report paid for by a tobacco company! (Especially one that concludes smoking is better than not smoking)
Posted by: Petrona | Feb 18, 2006 1:04:30 PM
