SMOKING costs the NHS more than £5 billion a year – up to five times the previously accepted figure, researchers have said.
Previous studies put the cost of smoking to the NHS at between £1.4 billion and £1.7 billion in 1991. But the new analysis pushes this figure to £5.17 billion in 2005/06 and the researchers believe this is still an underestimate. It equates to £571,000 an hour.
It does not report that tobacco duty contributes over £8 billion per year to HM Treasury. (This excludes VAT which is also payable on tobacco sales.) So who, exactly, is subsidising whom?
The idiot addicts are subsidising everyone else, and making the big tobacco companies rich. And yet still we get annoyed by their smelly habit. Aint no justice.
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