What is the UKVIA playing at?

Last week, following a 'rally' organised by a vaping advocacy group in London, I noticed that some of the placards held aloft by participants read:

BACK VAPING
PROTECT THE NHS

In response I wrote:

Protect the NHS? Smokers help PAY for the NHS!

The estimated annual cost of treating smoking-related diseases on the NHS is £2.7bn.

In comparison the annual revenue from the punitive taxes on tobacco is £10bn, or £12bn if you include VAT.

Smokers are therefore huge net contributors to the Treasury and, consequently, the NHS.

Yesterday the UK Vaping Association – which was represented at the event – tweeted:

Take pressure off the NHS by making the switch to vaping.

Included in the tweet was a banner (below) that read:

Tobacco costs the NHS and society £12.5bn every year

Interestingly the tweet was quickly deleted and rightly so because the claim is contentious to say the least.

To arrive at the figure of £12.5bn requires all sorts of estimates and calculations that are almost impossible to prove.

In contrast, we know the exact revenue raised from the taxes on tobacco because the Treasury has the receipts.

The latter figure – which includes VAT – has hovered around the £10-12bn per annum mark for years. This is FACT not fiction.

As it happens I’ve been around long enough to remember when the cost of treating smoking-related diseases on the NHS was estimated at £0.7bn a year.

It later rose to £1.5bn before jumping to £2.5bn then £2.7bn, which still left a huge gulf between the estimated cost of treating smoking-related diseases on the NHS and the tax revenue from the sale of tobacco.

As a result, every time the tobacco control industry tried to make the financial case against smoking it was an easy win for us because they had no answer to the facts.

In order to turn the argument in their favour ASH readjusted their sights and came up with a completely new figure that (coincidentally) matched or just exceeded the taxes raised from tobacco.

Thus an ‘online tool’ developed by ASH found that smoking in England cost society ‘at least £12.5bn in 2018’.

According to Public Health England (2018):

Action on Smoking and Health estimates that in England each year smoking costs society £12.6 billion in terms of output lost from early deaths, smoking breaks, sick days, provision of NHS treatment, provision of social care, household fires, and smoking litter.

A similar figure can be found on the Royal College of Physicians website:

Smoking is estimated to cost the NHS £2.5 billion a year as smokers are more likely to see their GP or be admitted to hospital. The cost to the wider economy is estimated to be £9.4 billion a year, including the cost of absence and illness from work and lost earnings.

The combined sum actually comes to £11.9 billion but either way the claim that smokers are a burden on the NHS ‘and society’ should be treated with extreme caution.

What I don't understand is why the UKVIA should regurgitate this obvious propaganda. If there's one body that ought to stick to facts it's a trade association that regularly complains about misinformation in regard to vaping.

Deleting yesterday's tweet was a step in the right direction. Now they ought to have a word with some of their members whose anti-smoking agenda is completely at odds with the concept of consumer choice.

PS. I've never heard of the Royal College of Practitioners (see banner above).

Is there such a body or do they mean the Royal College of General Practitioners? Or the Royal College of Physicians?

Either way the figure is still rubbish and should properly be credited to ASH.

See: Implying that smokers are a financial burden to society is "dishonest" and "economically illiterate" says Forest (September 2019).