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Thursday 9 February 2012

Smokers are Patriots

Friday, 19th March 2010

These days, when one looks back at the stratospheric rates of income tax levied in the 1970s it's commonplace to sympathise with those who sought to avoid such punitive taxation. If you were subject to such rates then you'd do your best to limit your exposure to them wouldn't you? Of course you would.

Something similar may now be said about the levels of tax imposed upon alcohol and tobacco. More than 75% of the cost of a packet of cigarettes goes to the Treasury. It's hard to think of many other products punished so severely.

And we all know, I think, that tobacco taxes are going to increase regardless of this election's outcome. It's for our own, and the country's, good you understand and anyway won't you please think of the poor beleaguered suffering children?

Nevertheless, it's a bit of a surprise to see a supposedly right-of-centre think tank calling for ever more punitive rates of taxation to be levied upon the country's long-suffering (in terms of tax, not their habit) tobacco enthusiasts. But this is what Policy Exchange have duly done.

Oddly - by which I mean not at all oddly - their proposal for a 5% increase in the cost of a packet of cigarettes is pretty much identical to recent proposals from the buggers at ASH. Then again, Henry Featherstone, author of the PE "report" seems to be in cahoots with ASH if his attendance at their events and agreement with their views is anything to go by. It's like asking a PETA sympathiser to write an "independent" report into beef consumption and then asking us to take their findings seriously. (Since at least some of PE's figures appear to be based upon ASH's "research" this analogy is entirely valid.)

Policy Exchange claim that while tobacco receipts contribute £10bn a year to the Treasry every cigarette smoked in Britain actually costs the state 6.5p. That is, the "true" cost of smoking is £13.74bn. Even a cursory examination of their claims reveals, however, that these figures might as well have been scribbled on the back of, well, a fag packet.

Smoking breaks, for instance, apparently account for £2.9bn a year in lost productivity - a number that, quite plainly, is plucked out of anorexic air. The logic of this, mind you, is that, were one to believe the numbers, there'd be a £2.9bn increase in productivity if smoking were no longer prohibited in work places.

But let's take it a little further: how much do loo breaks "cost" the "country" each year? Plenty I guess and perhaps something more than £10bn a year? The obvious solution is to make the wearing of adult nappies mandatory in the workplace. Think of the productivity gains, not to mention the stimulus to the adult nappy manufacturing and distribution business. Everyone wins!

Happily Dick Puddlecote has saved me the trouble of going through this nonsense in too much detail:

Like others, I found the most surprising stat to be the relatively small £713m accredited to "the loss of economic output from the deaths of passive smokers". So, on finding the report, I started at that bit.

PE's figure was based on notional deaths of 7,700 'passive smokers' at a cost of £92,500 each! Per year. Quite how they came to the conclusion that each phantom death cost the country that much money, they don't say. But the loss of output arising from the death of smokers (£4.07bn per year) is even more incredible.

In the 35-39 age range, for example, they assessed that the number of employed smokers to have died was 648 in 2008 ... resulting in a loss to the country of £470m ... £725,000 each!

Now, I can imagine they might have a point if they meant this to reflect a lifetime loss, but no. There on page 17 is the breakdown of the £13.74bn per year figure, with the rounded £4.1bn included.

I recommend his entire post, not least because of the evidence he brings showing that PE could seem to be close to shilling for a particular anti-smoking drug and the fact that much of it appears to be based upon "evidence" that has already been discredited or that should have been so dismissed.

Needless to say, Policy Exchange never consider the fiscal benefits of smoking - some of which are laid out by Mark Wandsworth here - not least in terms of dying younger and foregoing pension entitlements. Then there's the fact that most smoking-related deaths are, to be brutal, cost-effective deaths. There's not much that can be done and few expensive procedures or miracle drugs that can help you. A rational (in economic terms) government would encourage smoking.

And nor, of course, do our pals at Policy Exchange put any monetary number on the value of the enjoyment smoking brings or of the boost in productivity and creativity and so on this could bring. Following their methodological example, however, I'll estimate that at another £10bn a year.

Featherstone says he would have "no problem" with taking money from ASH. Which is fine and his prerogative (though one wonders whether he'd be happy to take tobacco money?). But he then claims:

Let’s be clear: I think a campaign which aims to reduce the number of pointless, needless, deaths is a good thing rather than a bad thing. It means thousands more families don’t have their loved ones snatched away in the middle of their lives. Perhaps you disagree that it is a good cause. If so, why?

Because I don't believe that a tobacco-related death is any more "pointless" or "needless" than any other death and because I believe that people should have the freedom to make their own choices free, generally speaking, from government-sponsored coercion and because I can't stand the use of the mawkish term "loved ones" and because, actually, most of those people who die tobacco-related deaths don't do so aged between 35 and 55 but perish at an age our great-grandfathers would have found miraculous and because, well, I think this whole report is utterly bogus and, as James Delingpole says, the sort of thing that one would expect to be producd by some ghastly Big-Nanny-Big-Bully-Quango.

Long-time readers and friends know that I have an interest here - having been Lady Nicotine's companion for most of my life - but smokers should be proud not cowed for their contributions to this country, even if the Treasury's actions make it entirely reasonable to seek (legally of course!) one's supply of tobacco from other, less barabarous, jurisdictions.

So, yes, smokers are patriots. To hell with Tea Parties; what we need are Tobacco Parties.

UPDATE: Chris Snowden - whose book you should buy - chimes in and I recommend you read what he has to say too. See also Angela Harbutt at Liberal Vision and an excellent post from Mark Littlewood at the IEA. As he says, this is real road to serfdom stuff.

Filed under: Britain (678 more articles) , Hackery (213 more articles) , Smoking (47 more articles)

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Fergus Pickering

March 19th, 2010 3:48am Report this comment

A smoker who dies at sixty of lung cancer - and isn't that the sort of age most of them attain? - has saved the state EVER so muc money. No pensions to pay and no expensive Health care for when you go barmy or become a pill-head. Heavens, no bus-passes to finance. Add to that the HUGE contribution through tax. I smoked from about 16 to about 35. I much enjoyed it. I gave up because of the money and because of my fear of death. That was thirty years ago. I am considering starting again, say three or four french fags a day. The main reason I do not, and simply increase my gin-drinking, is because my wife (addicted as I obviously was not) has just given up and I want to be supportive. I reckon the fags would be less damaging to my health than the extra gin.

Hawkeye

March 19th, 2010 9:53am Report this comment

Smokers gather outside my office window for a fag. There is a constant gaggle of them there. Even if a smoker only takes a 5 minute break every hour that is 40 minutes per working day. They still come at 9am and leave at 5pm.

In short they get the same pay as people who work 40 minutes a day more. Some smokers spend considerably more than 5 minutes outside my window, particularly when the weather is good.

So then smoke and get a minimum 8% pay rise...

Edward

March 19th, 2010 9:58am Report this comment

Why do "libertarians", broadly defined, in the UK care about smoking more than almost anything else apart from tax on the wealthy and climate change? I know that the early libertarian movement was funded in the same way as Forest, by the tobacco industry. Surely the path dependency can't be so large. But when I see deliberate gaps in logic, like replacing universal loo breaks with infantile treatment versus replacing smokers' smoking breaks with equal treatment, I wonder where the intellectual integrity has gone.

Alex Massie

March 19th, 2010 1:06pm Report this comment

Hawkeye - Your argument might be worth something if it weren't so obviously absurd. The trouble with the presumption that smoking breaks damage productivity is that they depend upon the notion that productivity is a constant. It isn't.

Edward - You're correct. My analogy with loo breaks is absurd. Deliberately so but no more nonsensical than the made-up numbers about money lost because of smoking breaks.

The anti-smoking brigade will seize on anything, no matter how absurd, that will "support" their nasty little cause.

If British libertarians are exercised by the smoking bans then that's probably because the War on Tobacco has been both a grotesque assualt on common sense and liberty and a tremendous infringement upon property rights. Since these are things libertarians (no need for the "scare quotes" surely?) take seriously you should not be surprised that they are exercised and vexed by this horror.

tug wilson

March 19th, 2010 1:56pm Report this comment

Have to agree,Smokers are Patriots,it is a pity the so called think tank did not look into the "claims" of secondhand smoke dangers,if they had and looked at the majority of evidence which tells us that SHS is not a danger then maybe this ill thought out smoking ban and the level of discrimination shown against smokers may never have come about,it could be that some common sense may have been shown,still we have an election coming up,time for smokers to have their say,but at the moment the Think-Tank is running on Empty.

Hawkeye

March 19th, 2010 2:08pm Report this comment

"Your argument might be worth something if it weren't so obviously absurd. The trouble with the presumption that smoking breaks damage productivity is that they depend upon the notion that productivity is a constant. It isn't."

I'll agree that productivity is not uniform, but that is not the point. The smokers spend an hour less at their desks than their non-smoking colleagues. The non-smokers "waste" time too, chatting, drinking coffee, going to the loo but the key point is that the smokers do all of those things as well. On top of that they pop out for an hour a day on fag breaks.

You can chop it up any way you like, but people who spend an hour a day away from their desk are available for one hour less than their colleagues who hang around their desks. No one can be in two places at once.

If I went to my boss and told him that, as a non-smoker, I wanted to spend an hour a day wondering about in the car park he'd tell me to find another job.

So the smokers get to work shorter hours than me whilst getting the same pay. Call that equality?

David Atherton

March 19th, 2010 2:13pm Report this comment

If we start bullying smokers where do we stop? Drinkers, meat eaters, fizzy drinks or car drivers?

As long as we are in possession of the full facts on active smoking we as adults can make our decisions accordingly. I find it obscence that Labour have legislated for a legal product on private proerty, ie the smoking ban in pubs and that Nick Hogan a publican was jailed for 6 months for having the temerity to disagree.

Belinda

March 19th, 2010 2:32pm Report this comment

Hawkeye: since you only observe people outside on their smoking breaks, you have absolutely no proof that they also waste time inside other than the occasional toilet break. Have you followed up on time and motion studies on all these people?

I have vivid memories of a smoker in the office in pre-ban days. She would spend an average hour after everyone else left, puffing away while doing what she had to do, using an ashtray that was stored away in a drawer for most of the day.

Time spent at a desk is not the same as productivity. I wasn't a smoker in that office and yet had no overall impression that I was doing smokers' work for them.

If it weren't for the smoking ban, these people need not even go outside, just nip into an adjacent room for a few minutes. The smoking ban itself has caused costs in the workplace.

Tiberius

March 19th, 2010 2:55pm Report this comment

As Bernard Manning said, after he lit up at the start of his act, "fu*k Roy Castle"!

db

March 19th, 2010 3:20pm Report this comment

I suspect that Hawkeye's opinion is somewhat influenced by his position in the office.

db

March 19th, 2010 3:27pm Report this comment

Also, I wonder how many working hours are wasted by people posting on comments sites?

I'm the boss, so I do as I like, including wasting time on the net and smoking inside when working.

Hawkeye

March 19th, 2010 3:42pm Report this comment

I'm not trying to stop people smoking. I even think that smokers should have a smoking room within a building. The drawbacks of smoking are well known and if that's what people want to do to themselves whilst paying for the privilege of damaging their lungs then that is their right as far as I am concerned.

Having said that, indulging in a habit should not be an excuse for getting paid time off. There was one company I was at were every time you went in and out of the door a "dongle" recorded your passage in and out. This way the smokers' breaks were deducted from their working hours. That seemed a good idea to me. Not every firm does it, in fact very few do it and that results in a loss or productivity for those that do not.

Hawkeye

March 19th, 2010 4:36pm Report this comment

"I suspect that Hawkeye's opinion is somewhat influenced by his position in the office."

Well, I would prefer it if the smokers stood outside someone else's window.

Innocent Abroad

March 19th, 2010 6:39pm Report this comment

Should articles such as this be allowed?

You may say "of course - anything else is a denial of free speech".

But consider. There are a number of internet Forums for the discussion of suicide - haunted mainly by more or less desperate teenagers. They make it clear that posts of the "kill yourself then" variety will be deleted and their authors banned.

Given the mortality rate associated with smoking - a largely political construct but almost certainly at least one in four smokers, is the difference between "kill yourself then" and this post not one of degree rather than of kind?

Industrial Tory

March 19th, 2010 7:23pm Report this comment

To Hawkeye and all other fresh air Silly
Billies Your opinions on humans working in
smokefilled industrial hell holes would be
most deeply appreciated.You know,the ones you you see occasionally on the TV.
The foundries,the forges,the Bessemer Plant,the boiler works,the weldingshops,the
heat treatment factories,the burning out
sheds. Where the lungs are scorched,where
blood streaked phlegm stains the lips,where
life insurance is hard to come by,where widows are numerous, in short where real
men work and die to produce the goods readily bought by non smoking wimps and hand wafters. Hawkeye and fellow travellers
who shuffle through the non productive
Nirvana, put the Ivory Tower up for sale
and sample some reality.

Look forward with anger

Hawkeye

March 19th, 2010 8:52pm Report this comment

"To Hawkeye and all other fresh air Silly
Billies Your opinions on humans working in
smokefilled industrial hell holes ....
The foundries,the forges,the Bessemer Plant,the boiler works,the weldingshops,the
heat treatment factories,the burning out
sheds. Where the lungs are scorched....

WTF are you on about? This is about tobacco smoking, not H&S at work.

Since you want my opinion, anyone forcing people to work in those conditions should be prosecuted.

Belinda

March 19th, 2010 9:14pm Report this comment

Hawkeye: Smoking isn't a health and safety at work issue? Well it's pretty much dressed up as one. I agree with you, for what it's worth. It's an issue of marginalising the users of a legal product.

Innocent. Yes one of degree, like going out for a walk in January will subject you to harmful exposure from the sun's rays.

The truth is that we have no idea what proportion of deaths results from smoking rather than other factors. Comparing the situation of smokers with a teenager who has expressed suicidal tendencies is stretching a point, to say the least.

sm

March 20th, 2010 3:13am Report this comment

Funny. We do use a clock-out system in the place that I work, and if effect all my cigarette breaks are on my own time. But anti-smoking collegues do find the time on the clock to lecture me about how I am destrying my health. Even when I dared make the argument 'you know I have work to do' the response was that this was for my own good and more important than work, keeping babling for the next 20 minutes or so. Matter of fact, I think the guy spend most of his day looking up bogus anti-health facts on the internet related to smoking - I've kept receiving an email every half and hour for the rest of the day - and I even got asked if I read them all at the day's end! Brilliant! I of course didn't and replyied politely no I would rather do this on my own time, as work won't do itself, and there's a range of things needing attention when at work.

Smoking has nothing do to with work ethic. Speaking of which, legislation does provide for two 15 minute breaks durig the day, during which anybody can do what they want get a cup or even light up. Much better to do both at the same time imho.

And one last thing. I doubt that any of the non-smokers would believe it as they haven't tried, but smoking is relaxing and I find it goes a long way towards helping you focus, especially if you are like me in the IT Industry where a job requires long mental tasks (I am a senior programmer). I have proven to myself and my boss time and time again, that taking a step back, have 5 mins to have a smoke and coming back to get another crack at that difficult to solve problem; succesfully more often than not. So how does that relate with smoking and loss of productivity?

Mark Wadsworth

March 20th, 2010 2:07pm Report this comment

A belated thanks for the link.

Pat Nurse

March 21st, 2010 9:35pm Report this comment

Smokers are targets for bullies at work who justify their abuse. Employers can still legally advertise vacanies to non-smokers only despite the smoke free law. I also smoke in my own time. I do not take cigarette breaks.

Joseph Takagi

March 29th, 2010 8:30pm Report this comment

Edward,

"Why do "libertarians", broadly defined, in the UK care about smoking more than almost anything else apart from tax on the wealthy and climate change? I know that the early libertarian movement was funded in the same way as Forest, by the tobacco industry"

The main thing is that it's an almost entirely libertarian issue and is current and ongoing.

It's also quite a clear example of how the banning doesn't end once one thing gets stopped. They've banned smoking in offices and pubs and are now moving onto things like shared balconies in blocks of flats and cars. It will be open parks next, with some numbers plucked out of thin air about the cost of collecting cigarette butts.

I'm not a smoker. In fact, I'm an ex-smoker. But I'm against the ban because it's against people's liberties, it's damaging pubs across the country and because I believe that what other people do is none of my business (unless it affects them) and vice versa.

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