Smoking: Bad for You, Good for Society

They may die earlier, but they sure suck up a lot of resources before they finally do die. Not to mention the collateral damages of their "diseases" ie childhood asthma and the destruction of medical staff through lifting fat people who can't shift their own body weight.

a) that's super morbid. I like it.
b) Pieter van Baal has the most amazing name ever. I'm jealous.

Hurray for purely economic logic!

Even if this reductionist approach is accurately measuring what it is supposed to measure, it's bullshit.

What this doesn't factor in is the human suffering that smoking causes along the way to killing people - the mothers, fathers, children, friends, and lovers who lose someone near and dear to them to cancer. What is the cost of that?

I just want to say: You're welcome society.

I once did a cost/benefit analysis of the "burden of smoking" on the health care system. Mind, without the time factor. I found that smoker's contribution to the taxes far outweighed any cost of increased heath care costs associated with smoking.

Interesting article, thanks!

Interesting. I wish people would have a more realistic perception of obesity and fatphobia in particular.

Killing ethnic minorities is good because it helps to fight the human overpopulation.

"It costs more to care for healthy people who live years longer..."

Hmmm, so the sooner you die the better?

Carousel anyone?

I suppose it would be beneficial to provoke people to shorten their lifespan before they are able to dip into their pensions. The threat of health concerns do not work, I've known two people to get cancer, only to have it dealt with then continue to smoke until the cancer came around the second time killing them. Oh, and for one of them it was breast cancer the first time, and lung the second. Another person I know smokes probably with the intent that he wants it to kill him. Speaking of smoking, I still have to watch the rest of the season of Mad Men on Netflix when I have the time.

second hand smoke = PC bullcrap

PC bullcrap nothing. Tell that to my 2 neices that both cough constantly and are sick constantly b/c my idiot brother and his wife smoke around them.

Nonsense.

First, by your kindly rationale, we should stop doing colonoscopies and mammograms. Look at the savings when people die early. YAY!

The truth is: smokers die sooner, but MORE EXPENSIVELY--especially to medicare/medicaid. Erbitux for lung cancer, eg, costs $15g's a month. Nonsmokers live longer but healthier lives, with less costly medical expenses at end. Their lives are more productive, being less encumbered by debilitating diseases like COPD, cancer, heart disease, etc. Smokers have 50 per cent more absenteeism than non-smokers.

Consider also:

--The cost to families having to deal with 1 less wage-earner, or 1 less child-care giver. How do you quantify the loss of a grandparent no longer there to give wisdom and guidance, to share the duties of child-rearing, to ease a parent's burden?

--The cost to a son, daughter or sibling who has to drop everything to care for an ill relative.

--The cost to all of us of children no longer able to afford college. How DO you quantify the loss of a child's education from a parent who dies early?

Your vile, ugly myth was first promulgated by Philip Morris to fight a Czech tax hike. PM apologized, but the PR gets regurgitated by the unconscionable and the uninformed.

You swallow tobacco propaganda too easily.

Its an enviromental thing as well, a person cannot fret constantly about ovepopulation and then support endless initiatives to lengthen lives. You cant have it both ways.

Overpopulation is the biggest problem. I propose we decimate the population every ten years.

Just remember, when you are old or incapacitated you are a burden to us, our lives are measured in monetary value, and if yours is in the red, you best check out. We don't want to have to deal with you. /sarcasm

Reminds me of utilitarianism (& check criticism).

Sounds good, but...

@hmm...

I don't think you can prove abstract principles like utilitarianism. It's one of those things a person has to see the value in. John Stuart Mills had some great ideas, some highly influential. The problem with utilitarianism is largely in the interpretation. Mills also suggests that what is ultimately best for one person is best for all people, so that pushes utilitarianism out of the domain of egotistical motives, and subjects egotistical motives to consideration that if they contradict collectivist welfare, then they also contradict egotistical welfare, no matter how obscure the relation.

My immediate reaction to utilitarianism was one of acceptance, then rejection, and finally appreciation. It took some time to see how exactly it all relates. The "proof" to me was not in the pudding, it was in how I ate the pudding.

Consequentialism is the domain of morality to which I generally ascend.

“ Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think...
”
— Jeremy Bentham , The Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789) Ch I, p 1

>>I once did a cost/benefit analysis of the "burden of smoking"

Ah, yes, that study by the famous scientist, "oOPonyOo"

Give me a break. Real studies by real scientists find that taxes don't begin to cover the societal costs.

Also, the Netherlands is the smokingest country in Europe, AND the most ignorant about the health effects. See this month's BMJ: http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.d2138.full