Statistics for dummies
Thursday, February 2, 2012 at 9:28 On Monday I reported that "experts" from Fresh (Smokefree North West) were in Ireland, advising the locals on how to run a tobacco control programme.
It turned out they were there to receive an award from the Irish Cancer Society.
This morning Fresh issued "new figures" that "show for the first time the true cost of smoking to the North East in lives lost, illness and the toll of finances - costing the region over £210 million pounds every year".
I am tempted to publish the press release in full because it's a mass of calculations and statistics. On reflection I'll spare you the whole thing but if you really want to read it for yourself go to the Fresh website where you will find a press release headlined Pound for pound our biggest killer.
Here's a taste:
New figures released today by Fresh help to show for the first time the true cost of smoking to the North East in lives lost, illness and the toll of finances - costing the region over £210million pounds every year.
The statistics from Fresh in partnership with Brunel University, combined with existing figures from the North East Public Health Observatory reveal the toll smoking inflicts in lives lost, illness and the resulting cost on the NHS, local authorities and private business.
The figures are localised to each local authority to enable MPs, councillors, local authorities and GPs to see the full scale of the problem still facing the region.
Despite the North East having the largest drop in smoking in England over the past few years, smoking-related diseases still cost the NHS in the North East around £105million every year, with more than:
* £53million spent on over 27,000 smoking-related hospital admissions each year
* Over £17.9million in outpatient appointments annually
* Over £19.5million spent on GP consultations annually
* Over £12.6million in prescription costs annually
* Nearly £1.9million in nurse consultations annually.
It is not just the NHS and taxpayers who bear the cost of smoking. Smoking is estimated to cost employers in the North East around £70 million a year, with 335,000 days lost each year to increased absenteeism due to smoking. Absenteeism alone is estimated to cost employers around £34.5 million per year, with the remaining losses due to smoking breaks.
In addition, the effects of passive smoking cost the North East around £35.9million each year, with by far the biggest burden falling on children exposed to the dangers of second hand smoke.
Deaths from smoking
Nearly one in five of all deaths among adults over 35 are as a result of smoking, causing around 4,211 deaths in the North East each year according to latest NHS estimates. Smoking causes almost 90 per cent of deaths from lung cancer, around 80 per cent of deaths from COPD and around 17 per cent of deaths from heart disease.
That breaks down every year in the North East to:
* 538 deaths from COPD
* 593 deaths from heart disease
* 848 deaths from lung cancer
* 183 deaths from stroke
* 2056 deaths from other diseases such respiratory disease and cancers of the oesophagus, kidney, throat, bladder and stomach.
Disease from smoking
If smoking levels remain unchanged, the North East will experience an ongoing burden to the NHS from new cases of smoking related disease being diagnosed each year.
Disease cases each year over next decade in the North East if smoking rates remain the same:
* Lung cancer 1,785
* Coronary heart disease 48,374
* COPD 10,462
* Heart attacks 20,974
* Strokes 12,586
And on and on it goes.
Cost to the NHS
The overall cost of smoking-related hospital admissions in Middlesbrough alone is calculated to be £3.09 million per year. Smoking is also estimated to cost Middlesbrough over £1.29 million per year in terms of additional GP consultations. Overall, smoking related disease in Middlesbrough is estimated to cost the NHS £6.5 million per year.
Similar figures are trotted out for Stockton, Darlington and Redcar & Cleveland. Someone, somewhere, has been very busy with their calculator. (The report, I should mention, was conducted "in partnership with Brunel University".)
We are also told that:
Smoking during pregnancy poses a significant health risk to both mother and unborn child. According to latest 2010/11 end of year figures, 579 Middlesbrough women were recorded as smoking at the time they gave birth. This equates to 27.2% of all maternities within the locality so far this year. This figure is significantly higher than the North East average (21.1%), and twice the national average (13.5%).
Now, I'm not advocating smoking during pregnancy but just because "579 Middlesbrough women were recorded as smoking at the time they gave birth" isn't, in itself, evidence that their babies have suffered as a result. It's a just a statistic that will be used to demonise pregnant mothers who smoke and justify the use of even more taxpayers' money to campaign against it.
Talking of which, there is a huge emphasis on the cost to the taxpayer of smoking-related diseases. I imagine this will become something of a mantra over the next few years. How many of those "smoking-related" illnesses, however, were a direct result of smoking? Unless it is certain that other factors (diet, lack of exercise or genetics, for example) were not involved, it is quite wrong to point the finger of blame exclusively at smoking.
Anyway, I shall be talking about the report on BBC Radio Tees at 9.45.
Simon Clark
The Northern Echo has the story here:
£210m - the cost of smoking in the North-East
Reader Comments (18)
Simon, you’re right. All this “figuring” occurs in a statistical fantasy world. One can play with numbers all day long which doesn’t mean that any of it has any causal or coherent basis.
These “analyses” are typically based on the delinquent assumption of underlying causation for a single phenomenon (e.g., smoking).
This also applies to the supposed “cost to employers”. For example, the “cost of smoking breaks” is based solely on an “average number of smoking breaks x time”. This approach assumes that all other employees – indoors – are always at “full production”. This is simply not true:
Concerning smoking bans in the workplace, a considerable amount of time, and accepted as an aspect of workplace life, is wasted by all employees. The antismoking claim that "smoker-costs need to include breaks at work for smoking" is never challenged. The position assumes that nonsmokers are comparatively always fully working. However, there are many examples of significant time wasted by all workers (see links following). In other words, smoke-breaks are offset against other forms of time-wasting (non-productivity) by nonsmokers. There is no evidence that smoking breaks add to “time wasted” generally. There is also the reasonable requirement of anyone taking a short break every hour from sitting in front of a computer. Also, there are instances where smokers, unreasonably, already make up the time, voluntarily or otherwise, at their workplace.
http://www.articlewisdom.com/Article/Reducing-Time-Wasted-at-Work/119631
http://www.tensor.com/news/wasting-time-at-work
http://www.salary.com/sitesearch/layoutscripts/sisl_display.asp?filename=&path=/destinationsearch/personal/par542_body.html
It's nonsense. It has been shown over and over again that the "healthy" consume the most health resources because they tend to live longer (old age is very costly health-wise) and they die more expensive deaths - taking bucket loads of pills, going gaga and wetting the carpets of nursing homes.For example:
"Because of differences in life expectancy, however, lifetime health expenditure was highest among healthy-living people and lowest for smokers. Obese individuals held an intermediate position. Alternative values of epidemiologic parameters and cost definitions did not alter these conclusions."
from http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0050029
Well fancy - according to their own figures all of their efforts to date are crap. Fewer people smoking, no exposure to SHS because of the bigoted ban - and still they claim people are dying of smoking left, right and centre which doesn't fit any real smoker's experiences of those they know who have smoked for decades.
In truth, the costs are probably what we all pay to keep those organisations and their staff in the luxury to which they have become accustomed.
Don't let them bully pregnant women Simon. That is their choice and that of their family's - not some finger wagging do-gooder with an ideological belief who bullies them because they are an easy target.
Moderate smoking when pregnant harms no one - don't let them twist that plain and simple fact - and don't let them get away with "smoke goes directly into the lungs of the baby in the womb" - it does not.
Anybody would think there was a consultation coming up!
I'd treat those figures as garbage until I knew the research methodology (when, I've no doubt, I'd still regard them as garbage).
Funny you should say that, Frank, because on BBC Tees this morning Ailsa Rutter, director of Fresh, was quick to mention plain packaging. The gist of her argument, I think, is that "pink packaging" and Super Slims encourage women to smoke, before, during and after pregnancy.
I posted a comment earlier with a link to a Dutch paper which demonstrates that the "healthy" consume more health resources than smokers (or the obese). It didn't appear. Anti tobacco campaigners conveniently forget that everyone dies eventually and smokers tend not to linger on into extreme old age, where health costs rocket. They do not subtract the savings from the costs. Here is the link again
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0050029
"Nearly one in five of all deaths among adults over 35 are as a result of smoking"
So smokers are represented in these figures in exactly the proportion in which they are found in the population. Isn't this like saying one in two deaths in adults over 35 occur in females so half of all deaths are caused by having breasts?
I would love to know how much these idiots cost us.
Just off the top of my head I can think of several million pounds in direct funding through the DoH (and from the DoH to CRUK and BHF and others) as well as funding to EU-wide Tobacco Control organisations and initiatives.
Then there is the 15% reduction in the pub trade and the resulting 100,000 redundancies, each one of those people now claiming benefits rather than paying taxes and NI. Then there are the ancillary industries that have suffered - the cash and carries, delivery drivers, breweries, caterers, cleaners, entertainers etc who have also lost their jobs.
Then there is the vending industry - worth £6,000,000,000 in 2006 then suffered badly post ban. Now virtually destroyed since the tobacco vending machine ban was passed with the slip of an ASH puppet's pen.
So just in those three areas we can see that Tobacco Control has cost the UK economy several billion (yes BILLION) pounds - I'm sure there are other areas and hidden bits of funding (through the EU, payments to the WHO etc) that I know nothing about that add to this, as well as the general shortfall in the economy of having at least 25% (possibly a LOT more if you include their non-smoking friends) of the population spending less as they go out less (I spend a grand a month less on going out than I used to, and I'm not alone).
Billions.
Billions.
Billions.
Will anyone ever pick up on THIS scandal?
So how do we publicise this massive waste of money? Oh yeah - we don't have puppets in the MSM and Government, so we don't.
Local paper in the north east has this article today with comments
http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/health/9506916.__210m___the_cost_of_smoking_in_the_North_East/
What causes death isn't important and impossible to answer anyway. What some may consider important - those who value length of life above all else, is life expectancy. Pfessor David Spiegelhalter of Cambridge University has a life expectancy calculator in which you can input different behaviours: smoking, drinking, exercise and diet. When I tried it, as a 55 year old man, it treated these four roughly equally and knocked just 3 years for smoking. Note it is exercise that is considered important - not BMI or obesity.
http://understandinguncertainty.org/files/animations/Survival1/Survival.html
Fasten your seat belts! We've the rest of the 'swarm' to come, yet. Repetition, repetition, repetition, couched in different formats.
Should be fun.
Anyone good at maths?
Since these people like their stats…I wonder if they have ever worked out what the percentage of smokers there are in the UK.
I heard Lansley say that about 8 million people in the UK smoked, personally I think it’s a lot more than that.
Sadly I’m no mathematician, and I would like some help on this, but let’s suppose that the exchequer rakes in about £11 billion from tobacco products, and say loses about £3 billion from smuggling and those buying cheaply abroad…so that amounts to between £14-15 billion spent on tobacco products by the UK.
Now further suppose for the sake of argument that they all smoke cigarettes, and that they all smoke on average 20 a day.
Question 1. What percentage of the population smoke. Remember the government say it’s around 21% based on about 60 million people in the UK.
Question 2. How many millions smoke?
I wouldn’t know how to go about this equation.
John H.
I seem to remember reading somewhere that the figures these people quote are not actual figures. I believe that they use computer modelling techniques. For example, the number of smokers would be assessed by inputs from tax offices, tobacco manufacturing company returns, Customs confiscations, surveys, studies and so on.
@John
Let me go through the tractor stats on smoking. The criteria cost versus revenue falls into so many areas. It is not only the health vs revenue these have to be part of the equation too:
Employment generated by the tobacco industry, delivery drivers, shop keepers, lawyers, office buildings and the corporation, income and NI taxes etc. I read that 80,000 people are dependent directly and indirectly for their jobs from the tobacco industry. For example 37% of visits/profits from convenience stores is from smokers. As many tobacco companies are UK owned it is one of the UK's most successful manufacturing industries these days.
As smokers die 7 years early than non smokers the lack of pension payments and the protective nature of nicotine in dementia and alzheimer's means that non smokers in old age are an incredible burden on society.
My piece on my blog says the return on smokers is 10 to 1.
“About six billion crowns is spent on the treatment of smokers’ diseases in the system of public health insurance annually while the tax on tobacco products brings in the state budget about 60 billion,” Heger said."
What is so good about this is that it comes from the Czech government's Ministry for Health.
On the number of cigarettes a day smoked is: "In 2009, an average number of 13.1 cigarettes were smoked each day by current smokers. This includes an average of 13.9 cigarettes for men and 12.4 for women."
The number of people who smoker are: 21% cigarettes, 7% pipes and cigars. 6% are very occasional smokers = 34%.
That makes it about 14 million smokers in this country.
It is estimated that if we all packed in income tax would have to rise by 3p-5p in the £1.
Effectively each smoker pays for for 1 in 4 non smoker's holidays if they cost £400.
http://daveatherton.wordpress.com/2011/08/22/the-czech-republic-confirms-that-smokers-pay-ten-times-more-than-they-cost-to-treat/
http://www.ic.nhs.uk/statistics-and-data-collections/health-and-lifestyles/smoking/statistics-on-smoking-england-2011-%5Bns%5D
I have no doubt that this release is timed to influence the public consultation, but I think that it is also connected to the plan to transfer health care to local authorities. The breakdown into local authority areas suggests that to me. No doubt people have seen this plan, but I'll post the URL here:
http://www.pharmatimes.com/Article/12-01-24/English_councils_to_get_%C2%A35_2_billion_for_public_health.aspx
The plan is to distribute £5.2 billion among local authorities to pay for public health initiatives.
Note where it appears! The Pharma Times!
JH
Q1 & 2. The figure of 21% full time smoker equivalents seems 'about right', that's 12 million people, or one-in-four adults. Of course, there is a huge number of part time smokers, who buy a packet on Friday evening, puff the lot and don't touch them again until next Friday.
Tobacco duties collected is about £10 billion, add another £3 billlion VAT to that = £13 billion. To talk about the amount "lost to smuggling" is meaningless, that is like me talking about all the goals I missed in the 1966 World Cup Final.
So that works out at about £1,000 per year per smoker = £3 per day i.e. slightly less than one packet of fags each.
The statistics on "cost of smokers to NHS" are clearly hokum, as they are a small fraction of the tobacco duty collected, in any event, if it is true that smokers die ten years younger, the saving on old age pensions is somewhere in the region of £15 billion a year.
And I looked at the "mothers who smoke" thing, that's typical diagonal comparisons, even taking their figures at face value, it means that the chance of "something going wrong with baby" is only ever so marginally higher with mothers who smoke i.e. out of 750,000 babies born a year in the UK, only 100 babies will have conditions which can in any way be correlated with smoking, despite 17% of pregnant women smoke, allegedly.
Despite the statements that these figures are 'new', we have seen much the same elsewhere on a number of occasions. I cannot help but wonder what the input of the university was. Maybe they wrote the computer program and processed the raw data.
But it is hard to see what all this stuff has to do with stealing trademarks.