this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
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It's worse than that as it's short term tax gains now but increased public health spending later from those same taxes when they start getting cancer in a decade or two.
But lower pension costs, and overall it saves money to allow people to smoke themselves to an early death. Even if you count the cost of their treatment, it's cheaper than 20 extra years of pension payments. It's a terrifying but sound economic policy.
Using the UK numbers, around 80k people die of smoking per year, costing the NHS alone £2.6bn, their full state pension cost is around £900m, so there is a sizeable gap between just the NHS cost and the amount on their pension as the pension saving has to be significantly more than the remaining years on their state pension as there is another set of costs next year, and the year after and so on.. Total cost per year is estimates at about £12bn, but direct government cost is a bit over £4bn. This doesn't include the fact that it ties up beds for other people who do not smoke, which means worse outcomes fro them, and this has knock on costs.
They just aren't killing them fast enough.