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Comment by NilsIRL | Hacker News Reader

And there are also (naturally) economic downsides as well:

  The costing model in this study covers three areas where smoking has been shown to 
  create ‘external’ costs: the direct costs to European public healthcare systems in a given 
  year; productivity loss to the EU27 economy due to increased absenteeism; and the 
  monetised cost of premature mortality

  Taking the three main cost factors together, the loss to the EU in 2000 is estimated to be at 
  approximately €363 billion. This figure corresponds to about 3.4% of the EU27 GDP.

https://ec.europa.eu/health/sites/default/files/tobacco/docs...

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Seems like some double dipping here. Not familiar with the EU patterns, but if seniors & retired people receive income from public sources, like Social Security in the US, then premature mortality results in a big savings, not additional costs.

Many smokers don't die suddenly. Even with heart attack/stroke, many will end up living for a next decade or two on daily expensive medicine and frail health.

Those going down with cancer will cost literally tons of money due to high cost long treatments. There is no cheap cancer medicine.

The idea smoking actually cuts down social costs is laughable and doesn't make any financial sense.

No, I recall Canada doing such a study decades ago. A lung cancer death might be years and expensive treatments but it pales in comparison to say dementia where you’re housing a patient who needs 24/7 care for a couple decades.

Plus smokers pay high tobacco taxes and fully contribute to pension plans prior to their early demise. This particular study found their smoking was a net positive, from a financial perspective.

Well, while you search for the link to that study and share it with us, we can spend time reading this chapter from a report about the tobacco cost in Australia (updated August 2021) that lists net present value of "healthcare costs avoided" being merely 2/3 of the lost productivity due to premature deaths alone.

Total tangible costs come out to 9.5 times greater than those savings, if you try to put a cost on the suffering caused by premature death and ill health the costs are 50 times greater than the savings from healthcare avoided.

https://www.tobaccoinaustralia.org.au/chapter-17-economics/1...

Financial costs bud. Trying to estimate the “productivity lost” is one of the squishy numbers you make up to prove a point you already formed.

Measure dollars in versus dollars out. Not theoretical dollars that may or may not happen in the future.

Sorry, I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying you need more time to find the link to the study you were talking about?

> The idea smoking actually cuts down social costs is laughable

I never claimed this. I am stating however, that it would appear that the proper equation for the referenced article should be healthcare costs + productivity loss - premature mortality, not the sum of all 3. I would not expect that the total is anywhere close to net negative, but I would expect it to be less than the reported €363 billion.

They should break this down further, and state the average dollar hit per smoker. Most people don't mentally comprehend how many smokers there are in the world at any given time, or whether the financial impact even high when applied to an entire population.

"On average YOUR smoking costs approximately $X" would be far more easy to understand.

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