Quote:
Originally Posted by The Flying Mouse
 Tax collected per year for tobacco = 8 Billion pounds.
Money spent per year on tobacco related illnessess = 3 Billion pounds.
The 5 Billion pounds is what is left over AFTER you've accounted for smoking related illness Deb. |
This 5 billion doesn't of course disappear - it just gets spent on other things. So for every one of the businesses you mention that are suffering a loss as a result of the smoking ban, another business benefits.
For what it's worth, I'm quite happy for smokers to continue to fund the rest of the economy via taxes. So if they're spending less on tobacco because of the smoking ban, then we should put the tax up to compensate. Then they can continue to kill themselves in the privacy of their own homes, happy in the knowledge that their funding of government spending continues undiminished. Oh, and I agree that there should be pubs where you can all smoke, but I'd like all smoking in the open air banned. And that especially includes just outside shops, businesses and airports, where the rest of us currently have to hold our breaths.
Dave