Dracoro

Redkop - that makes the woman even more stupid not only does she have the extra cash for patches as she's not spending the money on ****, but she get's the patches cheap too!!

Lost Revenue - in the short/medium term the money does need to be raised to replace the 'lost' tax. However, in the long term the cost of smokers on the nhs lowers to account for this. Just imagine how much extra resources/cash etc. would be freed up if there were no smoking related illnesses!! Of course, then we'll have the issue of people living longer and costing the country more in social security etc. All a massive circle really!!

Redkop

It gets worse than that Drac, more than likely the 'rich' aren't paying for them either over the counter - if they had sense they would buy a Pre-Paid Prescription for 90 quid or so for 12 months for unlimited prescriptions.

So yep, she is very stupid

OllyK

Dracoro - think this has been covered elesewhere, but the amount of tax generated from cigarettes is significantly more that the cost of smoking related treatments on the NHS.

Now a 9bn deficit has been mentioned which assumes that as soon as smoking stops so does the burden on the NHS, which is not the case, the NHS will have a gradually decreasing smoking related burden over the next 50 years or so (possibly more).

So not only would the exchequor be 9bn down per year, the money to treat smoking related ilness also needs to be found from somewhere year on year.

End result the government cannot afford to wholesale ban smoking, hence the current approach of trying to increase the tax at the same rate that people give up smoking so the overall revenue emains the same, but the long term burden on the NHS is reduced. As you rightly point out this does not also take in to account people living longer and the additional burdens on society this may produce.

So as I see it the government will keep rasing taxes on cigarettes until only a very small number of people are prepared to pay the price. Be interesting to see the last smoker in the UK paying out £9 billion for a pack of 20

Dream Weaver

Dont think the non smokers will think that though

EddScott

From what I remember the government makes about 9bn from **** and the NHS pays out about 6 or 7bn on smoking related illness so they make about 2 or 3bn on smoker.

And as mentioned if **** were banned the 9bn would disappear but the 7bn would still be needed giving a 16bn deficit.

Dream Weaver

Right so thats £100 each per month extra