According to ASH the cost of smoking to society has risen to £17 billion a year, a scarcely believable increase of £5 billion since they last got their abacus out in 2018.
On May 30 that year, in advance of World No Tobacco Day, the anti-smoking group claimed that the 'true cost' of smoking in England was £12.5 billion.
To no-one's surprise the figure just pipped the £12 billion the Government raised annually from the taxes on tobacco, including VAT.
To put this in context, tobacco control campaigners had struggled for years with the fact that the revenue from tobacco far outweighed the alleged cost of treating smoking-related diseases on the NHS which was estimated (and I stress ‘estimated’) at £2.5bn.
Given the disparity it was nigh on impossible to claim that smokers were a financial burden on society. To combat this problem ASH set about estimating what they insisted was the broader cost of smoking and - voila! - the figure they calculated just exceeded the revenue from the legal sale of tobacco.
Today, it is claimed:
New economic analysis of national data for ASH finds the cost of smoking to society is significantly higher than previous estimates have shown. Commissioned by charity Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) the new figures published today [Friday 14th January] show the cost of smoking to society totals £17.04bn for England each year. This compares to £12.5bn under the previous estimate.
The higher estimate is a result of a new assessment of the impact of smoking on productivity. Smokers are more likely than non-smokers to become ill while of working age increasing the likelihood of being out of work and reducing the average wages of smokers. Smokers are also more likely to die while they are still of working age creating a further loss to the economy. Together this adds up to £13.2bn.
Smokers’ need for health and social care at a younger age than non-smokers also creates costs, with smoking costing the NHS an additional £2.4bn and a further £1.2bn in social care costs. This includes the cost of care provided in the home and, for the first time, residential care costs. However, many of smokers’ care needs are met informally by friends and family. It’s estimated that to provide paid-for care to meet needs would cost society a further £14bn. This is not included in the overall £17bn figure but illustrates the wider burden of smoking beyond pounds and pence.
You can read Forest’s response here but our reaction to ASH's tortured calculations can be summed up in two words - ‘absurd’ and ‘contrived’.
The Mirror has a report - with a quote from Forest - but the only other reports I’ve seen are in the north east of England where the anti-smoking group Fresh drives the anti-tobacco agenda and the regional media are happy to dance to their tune without a counter argument from anyone.
Irrespective of the disappointing media coverage the results of ASH’s latest 'analysis' will no doubt be winging their way to members of parliament.
Let's hope MPs and peers recognise ASH for what it is – a partisan pressure group – and treat these figures with the scepticism they deserve.