One of the most common arguments made by tobacco prohibitionists is that smokers represent a greater cost to the health care system than non-smokers. At every opportunity, the anti-smoker brigade loudly proclaims that smokers are costing Canadian “taxpayers” billions of dollars each and every year.
But, is it true?
Among those promoting a back door policy to prohibition is the “Physicians for a Smoke Free Canada”. The figures used in the chart above were taken from a fact sheet on their web site. They purport to show the costs associated with providing health care to Canadians who choose to smoke.
How accurate those figures may be is a matter for debate. Just how were these figures calculated? Did they simply take the information from the part of the admission form that asks if you smoke and how much? If you fell off your ATV (All Terrain Vehicle) and broke your arm, was it considered a smoking related incident, because you identified yourself as a smoker?
I suspect the methodology used to determine smoker’s health care costs would be an interesting read. But, let’s ignore the legitimacy of the figures for the purposes of this post and assume them to be correct.
According to the figures provided on their web site, Physicians for a Smoke Free Canada estimates that the total cost of medical treatment for smokers was $4.36 billion in 2006.
That’s a healthy chunk of money. (Forgive the pun.)
What the fact sheet fails to mention is that smokers are taxpayers too. They contribute just as much to their health care costs as any other Canadian. In fact, they pay considerably more than most other Canadians.
For the 2005/2006 fiscal year, combined revenue for the two senior levels of government was $7.09 billion from taxes on tobacco products, not including sales taxes. Health care for smokers cost the “taxpayer” nothing. Through punitive taxation on tobacco, primarily cigarettes, smokers contribute $2.73 billion dollars more than they receive. In fact, not only do smokers pay for their own health care, they contribute roughly $83 annually towards the health care costs of every man, woman and child in the country.
To be candid, however, it should be noted that all the money collected from tobacco taxes does not go towards the health care of either the smoker or the general public. Tens of millions of dollars are siphoned off for the anti-smoker brigade to continue their campaign to de-normalize smokers.
Those who frequent sites such as this one are already aware of these facts. The general public is not. And, no one involved in the tobacco control movement, including the press and politicians, is about to tell them.
Why let the truth get in the way of their efforts to categorize smokers as abnormal.
When the Liberal government of Dalton McGuinty passed the Smoke Free Ontario Act two years ago, they also banned “power walls”, the displays of cigarettes usually located behind the cash register in convenience stores. The ban takes effect May 31, and the Ontario Ministry of Health Propaganda anticipates voluntary compliance by 90 per cent of retailers by the deadline.
Not only will convenience store owners be forced to cover their tobacco displays, but clerks won’t be able to sell a pack of smokes unless customers tell them the exact brand they want.
The initiative is aimed at limiting children's exposure to the deadly tobacco products, says the Minister of Health Promotion, Margaret Best.
"It's not what you should see, it's what you shouldn't see, and you shouldn't be seeing cigarettes," the Minister said during an interview with CTV. Ms. Best is concerned that the mere sight of a pack of smokes will corrupt our kids; turning them into instant nicotine fiends.
I wonder if anyone has pointed out to the Minister the recent claims by Health Canada that more teenagers use marijuana on a regular basis than smoke cigarettes. And, there are no “power walls” of marijuana to entice kids into experimenting with that particular illegal product. If displays of legal tobacco products offend her tender sensibilities, she’d probably go into cardiac arrest if she were forced to sit through a screening of that thirties classic, “Reefer Madness”.
I stopped by the local convenience store a few days ago; the one I’ve been patronizing for the past fifteen years or so. I used to visit the store on a daily basis. These days, I stop by once a week or so.
I buy my smokes elsewhere. I can buy an entire carton for a few more dollars than I spend on a single pack of legal smokes. I figure if the government isn’t concerned about turning me into a criminal, then I won’t lose any sleep over it.
Convenience stores earn up to 60 per cent of their revenue from tobacco sales. Losing part of that revenue will have serious consequences on their bottom line. And, revenue lost to sales of contraband tobacco is just part of the problem. They also lose out on payments from the industry generated by the brand identification advertising which the tobacco displays represented.
There are also substantial losses incurred through less frequent visits by smokers in need of their daily nicotine fix. With reduced traffic from smokers, sales of impulse items such as confectionaries, soft drinks, breath mints, etc. are also lost.
The owner told me he had been quoted a price of $1200 to have new shelving installed to comply with the new government regulation; money he doesn’t have. He won’t be in compliance by the May 31 deadline. But he will try to hide his tobacco display.
Health Propaganda Minister says retailers have had several years to prepare for new rules. Public health inspectors will be out at the end of the month looking for offenders. Non-compliance could mean fines of up to $5,000. Corporations (chain stores) will face stiffer penalties.
One point should be made concerning this little bit of lunacy. By making tobacco taboo, it will encourage rebellious teens to take up smoking and defeat the intention of the ban.
And, the punitive levels of taxation imposed by senior levels of government have already made cheap contraband more readily available than it would otherwise have been.
A naughty adventure to entice younger teens, rebelious defiance by older teens and cheaper smokes within the teen budget. The law of unintended consequences at work.
It should not come as any surprise that the biggest beneficiary, monetarily speaking, of the war being waged against smokers is the pharmaceutical industry. The more smokers who can be “encouraged” (or forced) to quit, the greater the sales of smoking cessation products like bupropion SR, nicotine gum, nicotine inhalers, nicotine lozenges, nicotine nasal spray, nicotine patches, and varenicline.
This represents a serious problem of which the public is largely unaware.
The public has been told that “big tobacco” is not to be trusted; that their only objective is to increase revenues from the sale of tobacco products. Tobacco control “experts” foster the belief that any organization or individual accepting funding from the tobacco industry is tainted by their association with big tobacco and should be dismissed out of hand.
Dr. Michael Siegel, himself an anti-smoking advocate, makes the point succinctly in an April 29, 2008 to his blog, The Rest of the Story: Right From the Anti-Smoking Playbook: When You Don't Like Something Someone Says, Accuse Them of Being a Big Tobacco Shill.
The question which has to be answered is whether scientific studies conducted, directly or indirectly, with funding from the pharmaceutical industry are any more reputable or reliable than those conducted with funding from big tobacco. Both aspire to generate income from increased sales of their respective products.
According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), total expenditures on prescribed and non-prescribed drugs in Canada reached $21.8 billion in 2004. Obviously, there’s a lot of money to be made from the manufacture, distribution and sale of both prescription and over-the-counter drugs, including smoking cessation drugs.
And, the anti-smoker brigade, to a greater and greater degree, is being funded by big pharmaceutical interests. They have a vested interest in imposing restrictions on smoking, via bans and punitive taxation on tobacco products. The more smokers forced to quit, the greater the profits of the drug companies.
And financial support from pharmaceutical interests may well be influencing the decisions of those receiving the funding. This was illustrated in another post by Dr. Siegel: “Press Release on Smoking Cessation Guidelines Fails to Disclose Financial Conflict of Interest of Expert Panelists”, published on May 8, 2008.
Dr. Siegel notes in his post: “A press release issued by the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality (AHRQ) to publicize the findings of a review by an expert panel of the role of clinicians in smoking cessation fails to disclose the significant financial conflicts of interests of the panelists.”
Dr. Siegel remarks that the press release lists drugs approved by the US FDA (Food and Drug Administration) as smoking cessation treatments that “dramatically increase the success of quitting”, including those NRT drugs listed above. He also points out that, “The press release fails to also mention that other research indicates that the overwhelming majority of smokers who quit successfully for the long-term do so via a cold turkey and not a medication-based approach”.
But, the most troubling acknowledgement in the post is that: “Nowhere, however, does the press release mention that 9 of the members of the expert panel, including its chair, have financial conflicts of interest by virtue of having received money from Big Pharma. Most of the companies from which funding was received are precisely those which manufacture or distribute smoking cessation medications and which therefore stand to gain financially from the panel's recommendations”.
He goes on: “While allowing conflicted individuals to serve on the panel is itself questionable, the failure to disclose the conflict in reports of the findings of the panelists is indefensible”.
The hypocrisy of the situation is undeniable. The science and statistics of studies funded by the tobacco industry can be summarily dismissed because they are motivated by profit and personal gain. Studies by organizations and individuals funded by the pharmaceutical industry are accepted without question, despite being motivated by profit and personal gain.
Of course, the drug companies are acting in our best interests, aren’t they? Uh-huh.
And if you buy into that little bit of wisdom, a friend of a friend of mine has some prime ocean front property available on the Saskatchewan/Alberta border. I’d be happy to put in a good word for you.
While reading through some background material at Forces International, I came across an article that referred to a news item which appeared in the Ventura County Star on March 17, 2003.
Thousand Oaks Councilwoman, Claudia Bill-de la Pena, was asking her colleagues to investigate whether the city could require the local housing authority to declare Oak Creek, a senior’s apartment complex, a smoke-free environment. Earlier in the month, representatives from a member of the anti-smoker brigade, Smokefree Air For Everyone, asked the council to prohibit smoking at the Oak Creek complex.
"This policy does not discriminate against smokers," said Councilwoman Bill-de la Pena, in response to criticism that such action could be interpreted as discrimination against smokers. "They will be allowed to smoke, just not in their apartments."
It’s a specious argument at best; just part of the anti-smoker brigade’s march to the outright prohibition of tobacco.
To get the full impact of what the councilwoman was saying, just replace the word apartments with any of the locations where smoking has been prohibited, or where efforts are currently being made to have smoking prohibited.
This policy does not discriminate against smokers. They will be allowed to smoke, just not in their apartments (bars, restaurants, public buildings, public sidewalks, cars, public parks, beaches, etc.).
This piecemeal imposition of prohibition has already seen the number of places a smoker can legally light up dwindle to almost nothing. In some cases, even smoking in your own home has been restricted; although these restrictions have been imposed through indirect means.
Refusing smokers the privilege of adopting or fostering children, using a spouse’s smoking status in child custody cases and denying employment to smokers who light up in the privacy of their own homes are discriminatory practices, designed and implemented with only one goal; to force smokers to quit.
To deny the ultimate objective of the anti-smoker brigade is fool-hardy. To deny the parallel of their crusade against smokers with the propaganda campaigns used by the Nazi’s in the Germany of the 1930’s is just as unwise.
Politicians, of all political persuasions, have climbed aboard the anti-smoker bandwagon to score a few cheap brownie points with their constituents. They mimic the mantra of the anti-smoker brigade, “for the good of the children”, at every press conference dealing with smoking related issues. They dismiss out-of-hand all objective, scientific evidence not approved by the health nuts in the anti-smoker cartel.
And, having accepted their arguments, they will have a difficult time refusing demands for outright prohibition which are sure to be forthcoming from the new goose-stepping smoke police.
Politicians must remove the blinders and begin a legitimate reassessment of the fraudulent science and suspect statistics surrounding the alleged hazards of secondhand smoke. They must reconsider, and discontinue, the policy of de-normalization that has created a climate of fear and loathing and led to unconcealed discrimination of smokers.
They are, to their detriment and the detriment of society, ignoring the lessons learned from the prohibition of alcohol in the 1920’s. The adverse socio-economic consequences are already beginning to manifest themselves.
A responsible government with any foresight would put an end to this insane experiment in piecemeal prohibition and denial of personal freedom, sooner rather than later.
I wonder where we might find one.
End of rant.
One of the most common arguments made by tobacco prohibitionists is that smokers represent a greater cost to the health care system than non-smokers. At every opportunity, the anti-smoker brigade loudly proclaims that smokers are costing Canadian “taxpayers” billions of dollars each and every year.
