Quote:
Originally Posted by Snowball
There is such a thing known as democracy - smoking is legal, the government made it legal and continue to allow it to be a legal drug - why? Because they make so much revenue in taxation. As I mentioned earlier: there are very few places that smokers actually infringe upon 'non smokers', and given the amount of money that smokers contribute to the economy - in it's own warped way, non smokers should be grateful to us: otherwise everyone's tax bills, their included, would go through the roof.
Plus, as I mentioned earlier; smokers actually contribute the same PAYE as non smokers - but don't live as long, thus we in effect, 'leave more than our fair share of monies paid for pension funds', to those non smokers remaining alive once we've popped our clogs.
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There are very few places that smokers affect non smokers
now, that's true however it wasnt always that way, only a few years ago, you could smoke in cinemas, bars, restaurants, on trains and aircraft etc. In fact there were very few places that non smokers could get away from us dirty filthy smokers.
All things being equal tax bills would rise initially in the short term but would start to fall after a number of years and revert back to about current levels when treatment for smoking related illness wasnt needed. Its this initial steep tax hike governments dont want, so they institute a smoking prohibition in phases.
The amount of money taken by revenue versus costs of smoking isnt as large as you seem to indicate. Depending on the sets of figures you view. The anti smoking lobby use one set that actually shows smoking costs more than it generates, while the tobacco industry and pro smoking lobby use another set that show revenue more than offsets costs.
Lots of ex smokers suffer from costly illnesses later in life, which the anti smoking lobby maintain were probably caused by but were definately exacerbated by smoking.