to think that the government want a smoke free country

[Iliveinalighthousewiththeghost]

Then they should stop selling cigarettes all together.

no they don't, they need the tax money

One word; prohibition. It doesn't work.

They should, but it's too much ££££ to lose.

Yes something to do with taxes. It's all about money but they've got to be seen to give a damn haven't they.

They can want it all they like. They won't get it in their lifetimes.

They don't want their tax money going to criminal gangs. You can't ban something unless you're going to be serious about it like Singapore, Dubai, Indonesia, Malaysia.... The west is too soft to do prohibition properly because the only deterrents which work are politically incorrect. Better to legislate and regulate.

I assume that they can't ban smoking
how would they police it......don't forget we are broke

It's not all about money. It's partly about people's right to do what they want to their own bodies. The war on drugs is going so swimmingly that what we should do is add tobacco to that list. Not going to happen.

Depends.... Would you like alcohol next on the list?

clutches gin

But on a serious note, banning would just make it illicit and fuel under the counter sakes (and lower tax revenue). It would make policing underage sales a nightmare.

The number of people smoking is reducing, but more telling is that young people are not taking up the habit - so fingers crossed this becomes a quaint old fashioned habit in a generation.

no they don't, they need the tax money

And they need the cheap and early deaths. Even if smokers stopped paying all tax and were given cigarettes free, all those early deaths are financially beneficial. Smokers die after paying most or all of their NI contributions but before claiming much of their pension, and the things they die of are relatively cheap and easy to treat, certainly as compared to long-term care and support for people who live much longer. It was smoking that kept final salary pension schemes afloat, and it's the massive drop in smoking amongst the demographic who had such pensions that was one of the major factors in their demise (apart from Brown's insane tax raid on them).

The idea that smokers cost the country money shouldn't detain us: something that, Logan's Run-style, only marginally affects people's health when they are working, but massively shortens their lives post retirement by giving them cheap, untreatable and incurable diseases, is the stuff of dreams for pension planners. Thanks, smokers: the country can afford to provide me with such pension as it can in part because of your selfless shortening of your lives.

I think the government desperately need the money to fund the approximately £9 billion per year, that obesity is costing the NHS.

Right now, non smokers should be worried about where that money will come from, if tobacco sales ceased completely.

Also smokers die sooner so are cheaper in the long run.

Thanks, smokers: the country can afford to provide me with such pension as it can in part because of your selfless shortening of your lives.

People DO get run over by buses, you know . So remember to look both ways!

Same as here in Australia I think. Don't want people to smoke because it's bad for us ( and the health budget ) but they do love them the tax money. It's been suggested here that smokers should pay a higher contribution to Medicare ( our public health provider, a la NHS).

I think the government desperately need the money to fund the approximately £9 billion per year, that obesity is costing the NHS.

Again, they die young, saving the country their pensions. There's precious little evidence that, say, a long and protracted death from cardiac failure and Type 2 diabetes caused by obesity is actually any more expensive than a long and protracted death from late-onset Alzheimers. But if people die ten years earlier than they otherwise would, that's a saving on pensions and benefits of about £100k even before you consider the care package they're probably receiving.

Things that make people die young save money. It sounds truthy to claim that it costs money, but if the costs largely accrue amongst people aged 65 or over, the savings on pension costs often neutralise any notional cost of health provision, and as everyone eventually dies of something, a death with treatment at 65 is almost always going to be cheaper than a death with treatment at 80.

That's my point though

They don't necessarily die young because NHS will provide treatment time and time again, so they recover from heart attacks/strokes etc. The diabetes gets managed at a massive cost. Any self inflicted conditions brought about by smoking or obesity, will be treated in order to prolong lives.

Assuming that people who abuse their bodies in those ways will die young, is outdated imo.

And what does dying 'young' even mean nowadays?

Not living until you're 80 years old?

Any self inflicted conditions brought about by smoking or obesity, will be treated in order to prolong lives.

Maybe. But insurance companies don't agree, because impaired life annuities for diabetes, smoking and cardiac conditions are still based on 10 to 15 years' lower life expectancies. By and large, insurance company actuaries have a pretty good handle on reality.

And what does dying 'young' even mean nowadays?

For a cohort of middle-class professionals, median life expectancy at 60 is about 89.

According to ASH the total costs of smoking still exceed the revenue generated.

www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CCEQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ash.org.uk%2Ffiles%2Fdocuments%2FASH_121.pdf&rct=j&q=revenue%20from%20tobacco%20uk&ei=R5RNVM6-NojVarPKgMAC&usg=AFQjCNFCnvYrZDLuMUL6ezTu5JL_56Dqhw&bvm=bv.77880786,d.d2s

even if the country could save money by killing people before they get old enough to claim a pension, it would be immoral, wicked and wrong, in exactly the same way that it is immoral, wicked and wrong for the tobacco companies to recruit a constant stream of young teens as the lifelong addicts customers they need to replace the older addicts customers who have been killed or incapacitated by smoking.

One of the political parties has a very long and mutually beneficial financial relationship with the tobacco companies, and is currently in power.

They don't necessarily die young because NHS will provide treatment time and time again, so they recover from heart attacks/strokes etc. The diabetes gets managed at a massive cost. Any self inflicted conditions brought about by smoking or obesity, will be treated in order to prolong lives

but for how much longer will that be the case?
NHS cuts, we are all encouraged to disapprove of those who suffer from conditions which we are encouraged to think of as self inflicted, how long before there is widespread support for not treating people.
Even with treatment these people are so physically damaged that they dont live very long

phadera the stats as they claim are:

£12.3 billion of tax and VAT income#
£13.1 billion of cost

the cost id broken down into:
identified factors £12.7 billion, other not mentioned.

Of the £12.7 billion, which is unreferenced, £5 billion is smokers breaks.

I have never worked anywhere where smokers do not make up thier breaks with unpaid overtime

so actually, they believe smokers generate £4.6 billion a year, which is 5% of the NHS budget on top of what they take out

ASH are crusaders and their figures are to be taken with a pinch of salt, also of course a harmful substance!

Let's look at Prohibition. Apart from the USA it was introduced by the Tsarist government in Russia in 1914 and maintained after the February and the October Revolutions until 1924 when Stalin gave it up as a bad job.

And in those Arab countries where alcohol is banned it is readily available if you know where to ask.

So no, prohibiting tobacco is not on the agenda of any political party with any faint connection with the real world. Taxing it is the least worst option.

And even that has implications - because it is legal the retail price affects the CPI and therefore public sector pensions. Lifelong non-smoker public sector pensioners or those near their pensions should be grateful to smokers!

Prohibition. Apart from the USA

Looking at prohibition in the USA is instructive, too. It pretty much mainsreamed organised crime because for the first time there was a high volume, high profit crime which had widespread public support. America's puritanism over gambling made numbers games profitable, but the middle classes weren't interested so it kept the Mafia in the ghetto; bootleggers were able to move into high society. Once the Volstead Act had been enacted in October 1919 - Wilson, presciently, vetoed it and it took a veto override by both houses to ram it through - it fell it rapid disrepute with few convictions and massive income for criminals, and it was repealed within just over fifteen years. It was a total, utter disaster.

The parallels with drug prohibition aren't quite right (with the caveat that I would vote for a political party that legalised all drugs) because alcohol use was widely socially popular and the prohibitionists were always a noisy minority of cranks, while the use of currently illegal drugs has never achieved complete social acceptability. Tobacco probably today falls between those two stools, and certainly were tobacco to be withdrawn from the market it would not have as massive a market for illegal product as alcohol would. But the street price of cocaine has fallen in real terms over the past few decades, and there's no reason to believe that the people who currently undercut legal tobacco sales couldn't continue to do so were it to be illegal (after all, they are breaking the law already, so there would be no additional disincentive).