jacobduchen

He brings up some interesting points, but he closes his article writing, "Those who die young save health care systems money, not cost."

Yes... if everyone died, including the smokers, governments would effectively cut healthcare costs to 0. Thats not how public health systems work though.

I would not say debunked

I think these estimates from the CDC are pretty conservative. In the US, EVERY YEAR:

"Smoking-related illness in the United States costs more than $300 billion each year. Nearly $170 billion for direct medical care for adults More than $156 billion in lost productivity, including $5.6 billion in lost productivity due to secondhand smoke exposure"

https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/econ...

OFF-TOPIC

A major way (the only way?) to curb tobacco usage is to simply increase taxes on tobacco usage, but politicians/bureaucracy prefers the short-term tobacco tax revenue.

Cool article about Chinese tobacco tax rev: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-12-12/the-chine...

In the short term yes, in the long term governments lose money due to chronic diseases caused by tobacco