Flutterby™! : Tobacco Smoke 2001-07-17 13:32:39+00

Tobacco Smoke

2001-07-17 13:32:39+00 by topspin 8 comments

Phillip Morris is doing a public service in the Czech Republic.

I wonder why Ted Bundy never thought of this defense?

Actually, if you are going to calculate the cost of cigarette smoking to society you are going to have to consider savings due to early death to have any meaningful numbers. That also applies to the cost of not wearing seatbelts and other things one often hears advocates spouting numbers over.

Exactly how many gold stars does a murderer earn per killing in this system of reckoning you're proffering, Larry?

If the victims wanna go, a whole freakin' bunch o' gold stars. At least in my system.

All I'm saying is that you can't just look at one side of a balance sheet because that is the side you like to look at. If one truely wishes to calculate costs one will calculate total costs.

The Czech society shames itself if it "goes easy" on regulating/taxing smoking because it sees it as a way to save expenses on health care. By the same cost savings logic, the Czech govt should place high tariffs (or bans) on insulin, AIDS meds, respirators, etc.

Diabetics, AIDS patients, and those requiring respirators and other sophisticated treatments for long-term care are EXTREMELY expensive health care risks for a socialized medical system.

If one figured the cost of treating diabetics vs the cost of letting them die, death would probably come out ahead. Ditto AIDS patients and severe head injury patients.

Topspin, nobody is talking about "just letting [people] die". They *are* talking about who pays for all of the extra medical care that smokers require. This was the basis for the $240billion tobacco settlement -- the states claimed that smokers cost them in extra Medicaid expenses. If it turns out that there are no extra expenses, then all of these lawsuits are basically witch hunts.

dexev, here's another take on the same issue. Both cite the report as calling the premature deaths due to smoking an "indirect positive effect" because the govt saves on health care costs and pension costs.

I stated that allowing diabetics, AIDS patients, etc to die would ALSO provide an "indirect positive effect" to the govt because of lowered health care costs and pension costs.

If the Czech govt is going to look at early death as a positive economic side effect, it could also benefit itself by banning or highly regulating insulin, AIDS drugs, etc. so it could reap the "benefits" of the early deaths of those citizens. That's ridiculous, of course, but so is Phillip Morris' assessment of deaths due to smoking as "an indirect positive effect" in an attempt to influence the Czech govt's regulation/taxing of cigarettes.