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Posted on 11/15/2002 9:33:16 AM PST by Jean S

Self-appointed watchdogs of our health and well-being have approached the elimination of tobacco from our daily lives with crusading zeal. Continual efforts to ban smoking in every public nook and cranny have forced smokers to behave akin to medieval lepers. It would be interesting to know the productivity cost of smokers deserting their jobs to gather furtively in dark corners beyond the reach of the antismoking zealots. Thrown together with the savings caused by smokers' pronounced tendency to die off early (therefore no longer needing expensive senior care), there probably is a decent argument that society would realize a large fiscal gain by encouraging smoking.

However, this type of cost-benefit analysis is not the strong suit of professional zealots. So, it is no real wonder that they completely missed the massive health costs that increased tobacco taxes and huge settlements have inflicted on the public they have sworn to save. As every smoker or person even associated with a smoker knows, when you quit smoking you gain weight. Common sense makes the reason obvious and we will not dwell on it now. What has not been missing is the cost of this increased caloric consumption.

A new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research lays out some of the costs of increasing tobacco prices. The zealots have run smack into the law of unintended consequences. According to the study, every 10 percent increase in the price of cigarettes leads directly to a 2 percent rise in the number of obese people. Between 1980 and 2001 the real price of cigarettes increased 164 percent. In that same period the number of obese people increased by 50 percent. Public-health professionals say privately that this massive increase can be traced back to the effects of higher cigarette prices, though fast food and changed working habits also were major contributors.

The problem is that the health effects of obesity far outweigh the negative effects of smoking. Two Rand researchers, health economist Roland Sturm and psychiatrist Kenneth Wells, examined the comparative effects of obesity, smoking, heavy drinking and poverty on chronic health conditions and health expenditures. Their finding: Obesity is the most serious problem. It is linked to a big increase in chronic health conditions and significantly higher health expenditures. And it affects more people than smoking, heavy drinking or poverty.

Early deaths caused by obesity already are well over 300,000 annually, and are growing. Obesity-related health-care costs have grown to over $100 billion a year and now consume over 6 percent of all health-care spending.

Of course the zealots have a ready answer for all of this: Just add a little more social engineering and everything will be okay. All we have to do now is take all the smokers who no longer can afford their vice of choice and force them to eat healthily. The great legal tort machine, well funded by tobacco settlements, already is gearing up for this new effort.

Look for a lot more lawsuits filed against McDonald's and Burger King as the zealots try to make us all better people.

James Lacey is a colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve and a New York-based columnist with expertise in finance and military affairs.

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