Alcohol fuelled violence

[whiteduck]

Weg,

what I posted was the synopsis or abstract which included the studies conclusion. What you posted was the beginning of the introduction. Thats where they were basically posing the questions they would answer in the study. If you read to the end you would have seen their conclusion :

CONCLUSIONS
Smoking imposes costs on society even when taking life expectancy into consideration, both in excess health care utilization and in terms of reduced labour supply.

You could also have referred to the discussion and the results section - which spells it out in nice tables and graphs. If you had you would have noted too that NOT all smokers die young, and I suspect that those who don't - carry a disproportionate burden of illness (and hence cost).

Your reference on the other hand was from a blog which was somewhat of an opinion piece. It was gathered from multiple sources, albeit referenced, however unlike a systematic review or meta-analysis the quality of each study was not reported or scrutinised and hence this was not a scientific study - even if he did go to Oxford University.


The problem you are actually describing is with the ageing population, all the sick, feeble old people who used to die from their bad health habits are now all getting CABGs and pacemakers and other costly medical interventions and living with ill health for their last decade or so.

 

[weg]

Whiteduck, your article was ONE of many studies, that clearly don't all show the same result - most likely because of the way they were conducted and what they took into account.

Regardless, they are only part of what i'm trying to point out to you.

I'll try again... they don't take into account the costs of cigarette excise, government pensions and concessions, or support that's required as people age and become more infirm (both home support and nursing home care)... what i've been trying to get through to you and you keep ignoring.

These costs are HUGE!

 

[BayView]

Agree smoking incurs these costs, but what i'd like to see is figures of lifetime costs for a smoker, minus revenue paid per person from tabacco tax, compared to lifetime costs of a non smoker, including cost associated with aging and support due to longevity.

One of my mechanics smokes approx 1 cancer stick every 20 mins when at work. I haven't counted every single one he has in a day - it's an approximation. I have watched him for little windows of about an hour at various times and the pattern is similar each time. It could be every 15 mins (probably is)... but let's go with 20 mins.

He works for 8.5 hours per day when he is there, so that's approx 25 cigs per shift. Let's call it 20.

Let's assume he is awake an hour before work, so there's another 3, and let's assume he is awake at home after work until say; 10.00pm - another 5 hours.

That's another 15 nails - let's call it 10 though.

I know that as soon as his feet hit the floor after waking up he heads outside for a gasper, and I know that as soon as he steps out of the car at my workshop he lights up again - he has a 10 min drive from home to work, and I know he has one before he gets in to his car to drive home (won't smoke in his own car).

If he wakes up during the night for whatever reason, he will invariably have another while awake - based on our conversations.

So, conservatively he is gasping away to the tune of 30-35 per day, every day. Let's say 30.

That is about 4.2 packs of 50 per week. What is a pack of 50 these days?...$20 bucks? I wouldn't know. Let's say $20.

His weekly gasper cost is probably in the order of about $85,

Or about $4,500 per year to round it off.

Let's say he smokes from aged 15 to dying of emphysema at aged 70 (more than likely - my Mother started at aged 12 and died at aged 67) - so let's assume he smokes for approx 55 years.

Total cost of smoking is $247,500 for him, plus god knows how much loss of wealth from no CG and rent he could have had on one IP worth $250k.

Does not take into account gaspers bought in yesterday's dollars or future dollars, of course - only today's dollars..

I don't know how much tax there is on a pack of coffin nails, but if we assume he goes into ICU for "last stage" emphysema symptoms, from my experience the patient lives about a week before they finally die, and at about $10k per day for a bed in ICU, that's about $70k in costs to keep him there, which would chomp into a sizeable chunk of whatever tax he has paid on his gaspers over the years..

This does not include any pre-ICU medical costs, tests, doc visits and so forth which he would no doubt have as he starts to get sick....

My Mother's experience was about 12 months worth of medical stuff before she died..numerous trips to Peter Mac to get lungs drained, final palliative care facility and so forth, and so on. The final 6 months was a lot more intensive.

Maybe we should present this to High School kids to ponder and hopefully help make up their mind about whether to smoke or not.

It has to be an easy decision which way to go, doesn't it?

 

[weg]

Bv, I'm not promoting smoking or denying there are high costs. That was not my argument.

My argument was there are costs to those that live longer as well that would offset ?some/? all these costs (in terms of government expenditure), and i don't just mean the cost of hospitalizations and treatment of non smokers who also get sick.

People that live longer also incur the costs of receiving government pensions and concessions, and support (home and nursing home care). These are significant costs.

Tax i think makes up about 63% of a packet of cigarettes. Then there is GST.

Also a dying cancer patient generally goes to a palliative care unit, or medical ward. Not sure why you think they go to ICU??

 

[BayView]

Also a dying cancer patient generally goes to a palliative care unit, or medical ward. Not sure why you think they go to ICU??

Because I used to see them week in and week out.

What I should have said was when they were starting to get to the pretty sick stage and had the earlier symptoms of their end stage...lungs filling with fluid and so on.

ICU patients are mostly admitted for the normal things such as breathing difficulties, heart, etc.

A smoker with breathing difficulties would come in for that reason, but when the tests etc are done it would show they are knocking on the door, but hadn't realised it yet.

Many would probably be aware they had lung cancer by this point, but there were those who thought they had a flu that wouldn't go away, got the shortness of breath from the fluid, and end up in ICU

Then they would be "promoted" to palliative/medical after this.

Some of the emphysema patients would come in because of the breathing difficulty, but never leave.

A similar thing happened with the liver failure patients from alcoholism - come in for wherever reason, and of course; the diagnosis would show the real problem while they were there.

I was surprised just how quick many of those liver failure patients died too - often it would be only a matter of a few days after coming into ICU, but not looking all that sick on the outside.