Kasz216 on 06 April 2009
| SamuelRSmith said: The flaw in that article (again, my laziness may be the death of me, here) is that it just discusses the costs and the costs alone. Removing a tumour and providing radiotherapy or what-have-you is a very expensive cost that will have to be paid off immediately. Someone who's getting older will build up their costs slowly. What's more (I don't think, I didn't read the entire thing), the article doesn't take into account the fact that if this cancer treatment is then successful, the smoker will continue to lead his/her life, and if they give up smoking, then they'll live just as long as the non-smoker as well, racking up costs on both ends. And like I said, there's more to the costs of smoking then just the health costs. Cigarette buds are also a huge litter issue, with millions of pounds going into clearing it, you then have to include the costs of education and advertisements, oh, and offsetting the environmental impact. Also, the costs was just one of my three points. The fact that the good is a demerit one means that it is in the Government's best interest to prevent the consumption of cigarettes, and that is another reason for the high prices. |
What's the difference? Whether it's all upfront or built up slowley? You make it up in the end.
No it does. It's a reasearch study... most research studies on this do find this to be the case. The only ones that do not are ones that just take all health costs as a net loss.
The rest of your points are rather minimal. The removal of cigarette buts can't be that much more expensive then all other liter removal in general. It doesn't in the US.
While education, advertisements etc.... the UK pays for that? In the US it's paid by the Tobbacco companies.
