Posted on 05/15/2004 9:18:03 AM PDT by qam1
Public health physician, Wellington, New Zealand. Department of Public Health, Wellington School of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Otago, New Zealand. New Zealand Ministry of Health, Wellington.
OBJECTIVE: To estimate the loss of life expectancy attributable to tobacco taxation (via financial hardship and flow-on health effect) in New Zealand.
DESIGN: Data were used on the gradients in life expectancy and smoking by neighbourhood socioeconomic deprivation and survey data on tobacco expenditure. Three estimates were modelled of the percentage of the crude association of neighbourhood deprivation with life expectancy that might be mediated via financial hardship: 100%, 50%, and 25% (best estimate). From this information the impact of tobacco taxation on life expectancy was estimated.
Main results: For the total population, the estimated loss of life expectancy due to tobacco tax ranged from 0.005 years to 0.027 years. For people living in the most deprived 30% of neighbourhoods, the range was 0.009 to 0.044 years (that is, 3 to 16 days of lost life expectancy). For the total population the loss of life expectancy attributable to tobacco tax ranged from 119 to 460 times less than that attributable to deprivation. The loss of life expectancy attributable to tobacco tax was 42 to 257 times less than that attributable to smoking.
CONCLUSIONS: The estimated harm to life expectancy from tobacco taxation (via financial hardship) is orders of magnitude smaller than the harm from smoking. Although the analyses involve a number of simplistic assumptions, this conclusion is likely to be robust. Policy makers should be reassured that tobacco taxation is likely to be achieving far more benefit than harm in the general population and in socioeconomically deprived populations.
PMID: 15143110 [PubMed - in process]
Hmmm. I wonder how much high income taxes take off your life.
My take is that if you are poor, then you have less access to top medical care, you have a cheaper car, live in a dirtier, more dangerous neighborhood, more stress over money, etc.
The cigarette taxes the poor more, but the study says the tax makes the poor poorer and reduces their life span but not as much as smoking.
The real kicker in the article is that taxes makes people poorer and thus die earlier. OR THE GOVT. IS KILLING US ALL THROUGH TAXES AND THAT IS LITERAL AND NOT A FIGURATIVE STATEMENT.
The hypocrisy is that if smoking were such an absolute danger to health and medical costs why not ban smoking? No legislator seriously wants this because it would take away a significant hunk of their tax revenue.
SHEESH........................and it's takes taxpayer money to figure this out?????????
When remodeling a few years ago, we found some circa 1919/1920 newspapers from the eve of Prohibition excoriating the Maine Congressional delegation for booze hoarding while lording it over the common folks.
;O)
It's a matter of morality, not a matter of life expectancy.
It seems to me that such waste of taxpayer funds should be halted and instead used to do something productive for the poor - instead of wasting it and taking more from them. maybe start with more affordable health care, more law enforcement, etc., etc.,
Please don't get me wrong - I am not a proponent of bigger government or higher taxes.......I'm just totally against just wasteful uses of higher taxes that always lead to bigger government. Vicious cycle.
Yeah, And I guess from the study we can conclude that since it used taxpayer money just running this study took a couple hours off everybody in New Zealand's life.
Hmmm. We already have Third Hand Smoke and we know it's a killer so I guess we can call these useless studies that cause us to lose time off our lives fourth hand smoke.
The sad thing is there are actually people who believe all the crapola........................they are the types that are supporting ketchup boy and looking to destroy America.
Another study that is a big,fat waste of time.
Fun to read,though.Gave me a good laugh but I doubt that's what the geniuses who did this study intended.
FORK EM ALL - ROLL YOUR OWN!
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