To think we shouldn't be funding this on the NHS?

[AgileJadeDog]

I recently had my first stay in hospital due to a respiratory issue and I kid you not, every other person in the bay smoked+had a smoking related disease.

I have no idea if this is typical in other specialties/hospitals but it really hit me how much gets spent on completely self inflicted stuff. AIBU to think we shouldn't be funding stuff like this?

I agree with you OP. The only issue is where to draw the line fairly.
people talking about accidents and pregnancy are not thinking straight. We need babies to keep the population growing and accidents are just that - it’s not an accident to get smoking related illness because you smoked (knowing the risk) for many years . I would treat these people but send them the bill afterwards .

Well that's the crux, there is no line...

Unless it's like private healthcare, can't afford it...no treatment.

Then you are indeed stupid and uneducated about the facts of addiction, the causes of which are often underpinned by society inequalities.

So any posters who may have been offended by your silly comments can indeed take your posts with a hefty pinch of salt.

Not everyone who smokes develops cancer. I'm not sure the statistics have necessarily been presented transparently. It's rather like the zero tolerance towards alcohol in pregnancy because the establishment doesn't credit women to be sentient enough to moderate. It takes a heck of a lot of alcohol to cause birth defects, not two glasses of wine a week.

Saying you know the risks of something is great when you’re looking with hindsight and from a position of privilege though.

It doesn’t look at why people start smoking. It doesn’t look at the social inequalities that lead to these things. It just judges on the here and now without knowing the bigger picture.

My local hospital has signs outside saying smoke free zone. However I have seen patients smoking outside but never seen one being pushed in a wheelchair by a member of staff. Family members yes, but staff definitely not.

I'd like a personalised economic record noting what I have paid in income tax and the the total of benefits and NHS services received for every individual to be honest. A digital record could be started from birth. We have the technology.

Define better choices. You could easily argue a sports injury is as a result of a bad choice depending on the sport…eg if you fell rock climbing many will say it was a bad choice. Same could be said if I tear my ACL running a marathon.

Smoking is always supported by saying societal inequalities- but yet low income people put smoking before their kids health. Anyone now who smokes is stupid because the effects are known about. It’s a choice. Nicotine addiction can be treated now without secondhand smoke injury to others and without funding the tobacco industry.

The problem with this is where do you draw the line with what is self inflicted? If someone overeats and gets diabetes should we fund treatment for that? If someone goes on a car journey and ends up in a crash should we help them? If someone uses an alcohol based mouthwash and gets throat cancer should they get help? While I hate smoking generally, and would prefer no one did it, I can concede that we all at some point do things that carry risk. Smokers are tax payers, too and introducing rules about who can use what is a slippery alope. I think really what needs to happen is more publicity about how most smokers end up with respiratory problems later in life even if they escape the more well known problems like cancers.

I honestly cannot believe that some people are agreeing with the OP's bullshit! If this is the society they would like to live in, fine, I'll stop paying in, I have private medical, private pensions and no children.... fuck the rest, fuck the people who need financial help, fuck the people who need state pensions, fuck the children who need schools.

In fact I am highly educated. You really think smoking is the choice that the smart people make??????? Just look back to your school days it wasn't the high achievers who were smoking behind the bike sheds.

It was quietly hidden from the public in 2007 that when the smoking ban started to bite, it was at a cost to the taxpayer.

Smokers used to be net contributors to the exchequer. Yes, they cost in healthcare. However they saved billions in not claiming pensions for decades after turning (in those days) 65. As soon as the ban kicked in, not only was the tax take reduced significantly. It set in motion a process whereby more and more people would carry on living and therefore needing their pensions paid.

A completely logical - if amoral - way to plug the black hole our economy has would be to remove all barriers to smoking, and see the pension bill drop.

When the smoking ban came in, there was a bit of smugness as non smokers got to lord it over their smoking colleagues, friends and families. And I wondered at the time if they realised that in effect the ban was going to cost them in taxes in the long run.

Judging from this thread, they didn't.

How many people on this thread would agree to have a 5% income tax cut if it meant we went back to 2006 in terms of smoking legislation ?

How do you know?

Did you in your condition go round all the beds and interview them all?

Or snoop in their charts?

Or did the medical staff breach their confidentiality to tell you?

I call BS anyway.

If you’re paying more than £80k in tax a year, then you’ll have private insurance and therefore be in a private hospital.

Even assuming you went into hospital via A and E, following your admission you would not have stayed on a public ward where you can hear everyone’s diagnosis, nor would you have been having a leisurely walk down to the hospital entrance during treatment.

You certainly are not highly educated about addiction. You are just mindlessly spouting ignorance and stereotypes. Of course there were intelligent people who smoked at school! How ridiculous.

My mother has smoked all her life. She's mid sixties. She has tried everything to quit, I've watched her struggle. She is so addicted. I get it, that some people successfully quit but she hasn't. She has private health insurance but I'd hate to see someone else like her who doesn't have insurance suffer because of this. I personally hate smoking, I never have and never will smoke. But having seen the addiction and even though I know she chose to start, I'd never leave someone who couldn't afford treatment to die painfully.

YAB massively U.

Do you think higher tax will stop that happening? Or do you think it’ll mean the children of smokers will go without even more?

Some just come to the UK every 6 months for a free prescription after the very expensive initiation of treatment period

www.theguardian.com/politics/reality-check/2015/apr/03/do-foreigners-come-to-uk-to-get-hiv-treatment

Do you think that the tax should be lower then?

Smoking is a bad choice for everyone. There needs to be more social stigma to it to change behaviour. Just like drinking when pregnant has a high level of stigma to it - and very few people do it. I think the same needs to apply to taking drugs and etc. I think the world would be better if people didn't smoke. You clearly think differently I'm not sure we will agree on that.

The higher the tax, the higher the crime.

Nonsense

You are being ridiculous. Are you really advocating sending home people to die because of some misplaced judgment by you on how they lived their lives? Are you so perfect yourself that you are never going to do something so utterly stupid that lands you in hospital? Never going to have an avoidable accident because you were distracted or didn’t think quickly enough? I don’t know where you think these people are going to get treatment if not funded by the NHS. It’s not as if insurance is affordable for most and certainly not if you have risk factors. So you are basically saying let them all die horribly at home without treatment. You sound like a fine human being.