When the government wants to jack up taxes on cigarettes, they always use the reason that it’s to pay for the health costs due to smoking.
Now,it seems to me that that is a bs argument. Because I believe that taxes aside, cigarette smoking tends to save the government money.
Just think about it. We all have to die some time. And usually, the health care at the end of our lives is much more expensive than at any other point in our lives. And most of us will have some sort of expensive to treat disease at the end of our lives, be it heart disease or diabetes, cancer or kidney failure,alzheimers or stroke.
Now, smokers die a lot sooner than nonsmokers, 6 years sooner on average, I believe. So it’s true that smokers average higher health costs at an earlier age. However, nonsmokers average higher health costs at a later age.
In the meantime, during the period between the average age of the smokers death and the average age of the nonsmokers death, the senior citizen is collecting all sorts of benefits such as social security, medicare, and the like. So by the time he/she dies, years later of some expensive to treat malady, they have collected tens of thousands per year in government benefits.
And then there is diseases like Alzheimers. The older one gets, the more chance that they will come down with it. Its also expensive as hell to take care of an Alzheimers patient. I would wager that smokers have a much lower rate of getting full blown Alzheimers, simply because they tend to die before they reach the age when it becomes more common.
So, even if smokers didn’t pay any taxes on their smokes, I would bet that smoking saves the government money. What do you guys think?