Why persecuting smokers will cost us all more in the long run

WE HAVE a zombie Parliament: MPs are spending less and less time at Westminster and more and more time in their constituencies, electioneering. But in this legislative void, the Government has suddenly found something to rush through Parliament, which apparently cannot wait until after the General Election.

What is this matter of immediate national interest? Something to do with the country’s security against acts of terrorism? No: the proposed law is one which will ban tobacco companies from branding cigarette packets with their own logos and designs. Instead, they must all be made identical, with plain packaging.

The ostensible reason is that such dull presentation will make people smoke less.

Not surprisingly, the big tobacco companies are furious that they are to be prevented from differentiating their products, since it is likely to drive consumers towards so-called ‘value’ brands, which are less profitable.

This is a much more likely outcome than an actual drop in cigarette consumption, as has already been demonstrated in Australia, where plain packaging was enforced at the end of 2012: tobacco sales have risen since, but all at the bottom end of the price range.

Ludicrous

While few sympathise with the cigarette giants (though your pension fund probably holds shares in them) there is an issue of liberty and choice here — set against that of public health.

Alcohol is in many ways a more damaging addiction than nicotine — it is linked to violence and social disorder: but even nondrinkers might think it a ludicrous expansion of the nanny- state if producers of wine and spirits were told to remove all distinctive labelling from their bottles.

The main force behind the recent legislative drive against tobacco is the view that people can die from so- called ‘passive smoking’. When it was thought smokers were damaging only their own lungs, the matter could be genuinely described as one of risks freely undertaken.

But if people are killing their own children with their habit, then of course draconian measures would be justified. And this was the argument which convinced MPs last November to back a (completely unenforceable) law to fine drivers who smoke while children are in their vehicles.

Yet the unfashionable truth is there is no statistical link between adults smoking and increased early mortality rates among their children. Research on ‘passive smoking’ published in 1998 by the World Health Organisation showed that the children of smokers had a lung cancer rate 22 per cent LOWER than children of non-smokers.

I was editor of the Sunday Telegraph at that time, and I ran a story about this under the headline ‘Passive Smoking Doesn’t Cause Cancer: Official’, revealing that the WHO had initially kept back its research into passive smoking in seven countries which had showed not only that there was probably no link between passive smoking and lung cancer, but that it might even have a protective effect.

The anti- smoking group Action on Smoking and Health took us to the Press Complaints Commission, on grounds of inaccuracy. But after an exhaustive investigation lasting several months, their complaint was rejected.

The possibility of a passive smoking protective effect seems paradoxical, but there is an analogy with the great increase in allergies among children, stemming from the fact that they have been brought up in a more aseptic environment than we, their parents, were.

Certainly, we have become accustomed to a smoke-free environment. Now, if I go into a home in which people are smoking, I do find my eyes are irritated. Yet as a nonsmoker, I never felt such acute physical irritation in pubs or restaurants back when it was legal for people to light up in them.

There is no doubt the ban on smoking in public places has made us more fastidious. Whether that in turn has made us healthier is quite another matter.

A completely different argument is often used to justify punitive action against smokers: that they are a great financial burden on society, as a result of the costs of their treatment within the National Health Service. This seems obvious, given the medical conditions associated with heavy smoking of cigarettes. Yet the obvious answer is not always the correct one.

Yes, Europe-wide statistics show roughly 16 per cent of male long-term smokers and 10 per cent of female smokers will contract lung cancer — a very rare condition in nonsmokers. But lung cancer does not take long to ravage its victims, and — at the risk of sounding callous — they will tend to die a lot younger than others, thus relieving the state of much pension and other costs associated with the aged.

The financial dark cloud occluding the NHS budgets is not the cost of looking after smokers, but that of the much longerterm care of the very old.

Almost as if by illustration, it was revealed by the Mail on Sunday yesterday that the Queen is seeking a new assistant to help deal with the extraordinary amount of centenarians she must now send telegrams to congratulate. Her successors will only get busier — it is estimated that one in three children born today will reach the age of 100.

Pleasure

Meanwhile, the nation’s heavy smokers pay huge amounts annually in duty: the overwhelming majority of the cost of a packet of cigarettes goes to the Exchequer, not the tobacco companies.

This question of the real cost to society of smokers, quite apart from the tax they pay for their pleasure, was analysed a few years ago by the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands. A team led by Dr Peter van Baal divided people into three categories: the ‘healthy-living’ group, who were thin and non-smoking, the obese, and smokers.

van Baal found that from the age of 20 to 56, obese people racked up the most health costs, but because members of both this and the smoking group died sooner than the healthy group, they cost less to treat in the long run: care of the thin and healthies cost on average £278,000 from the age of 20, while the smokers came in at a more affordable £217,000.

Will our MPs spend any time considering such data, or the Australian experience, before voting to introduce mandatory plain packaging for cigarettes?

No, the great majority will unthinkingly do what the doctor has ordered: in this case the chief medical officer for England, Dame Sally Davies. Britain will become a little duller — and a little less free.