You think an addiction is the same as refusing to participate in a system and then expecting to make use of that system? I thoroughly disagree. the point though is that your addiction is highly likely to mean you will need hospital treatment at some point.
You are highly unlikely to ever be in a position to donate your organs. The criteria for organ donation are very specific. You have to be on life support, be declared brain dead, you remain on that life support until you are taken to theatre for your organs to be removed (I don’t like the term harvested).
And addicts don’t start out as addicts. The warnings on cigarette packets are very clear. If you start smoking you do so by choice. You don’t have that first puff and bingo, you’re addicted to smoking. In fact most people I know who are smokers say they hated the taste when they first tried a cigarette, but they just kept on going until they became addicted. So no. I don’t have much sympathy for that and I don’t think the NHS should pick up the pieces.
But that wasn’t my point, my point was that if you start making demands on one behaviour then do you do so with all of them? And most people would agree that you wouldn’t. So if the NHS would treat a smoker for lung cancer then there’s no reason why they shouldn’t treat a patient in organ failure.
Think about what that actually means, it means someone saying to a patient “well, you’re not on the organ donor list, so we’re going to leave you to die.
Should they provide treatment for that patient until they die? Do CPR while they still can? Give a kidney patient dialysis? Or should they just turn off all treatment on the basis the patient wouldn’t have given their organs if they had died in such a way as to be eligible, even though they haven’t died that way and are likely to be able to donate their organs now.
The statement that “if you wouldn’t donate you shouldn’t be allowed to receive” is an emotive response and is not thought through at all.