The stats re: smokers dying younger are a misrepresentation of reality. They don't account for other factors (how many serious smokers have you known who exercise regularly?) and smoking-related illnesses don't actually take current or past smoking into account (everyone who dies of lung-cancer, for example, is noted as dying of a "smoking-related" illness regardless of whether they smoked or ever had smoked regularly -- true technically but misleading).
The argument that smoking-related illness cost government money is also misdirection. Smokers pay an enormous amount of taxes on their cigarettes that isn't figured into the calculations and everyone who's end-of-life care is paid for by government, already not a majority, will still need that care regardless of whether they smoked. Also, while the deceased don't pay taxes, etc., they also don't get Social Securtiy or Medicare, a cost savings for government.
This is in the USA, of course, but probably similar in other countries.
Protecting health and saving lives has nothing to do with anti-smoking or, quite obviously, anti-vaping legislation. It has only to do with politicians protecting their power & finances by doing the bidding of those who finance them, primarily the pharma and medical industries.
I've sent money to CASAA and give props to everyone advocating for us and all but we're not going to turn things around for vaping with arguments about public health. Either the vaping industry pays up, or it digs for the facts & figures on how legislators with 5 & 6 figure incomes have 7 & 8 figure bank accounts and threatens their power by calling them out publicly, or it dies in the US & elsewhere.
Which means it's going to die.
Thus my shelf full of hardware and freezer drawer full of nic.
Just a couple of points:
-Mentioned smoking related illnesses,like people that didn't smoke but died of lung cancer.
While yes this is true but you didn't mention a number or %,more or less we talking 20%...20% is not game changing when it comes to using it as an argument.
-As you said ''This is in the USA'' but if you look at it globally not everyone pays the same for a pack of smokes.
In Nigeria it's 0.91$ and the Aussies for example they pay 25.12% for the same pack of Marboro.
Talking truthfully i cannot say why in the USA and quoting ''taxes on their cigarettes that isn't figured into the calculations''.
Here we do know cent by cent how much they make from Lottery and Cigarette sales,for example let's take this year:
From January to May last year they had a revenue of 4.066 million euros.
Now in the same period but of 2020 the revenue was 3.625 million euros,about 441 million less they made this year.
Don't really understand the ''isn't figured into the calculations'' part,do they just don't use that money or do they keep it elsewhere.
As you said:
''It has only to do with politicians protecting their power & finances by doing the bidding of those who finance them, primarily the pharma and medical industries.''
^^
Agree wholeheartedly.
Same here,cigarettes is a big market in Spain and they do whatever they can do keep that inflow of cash,sad but true.
''The argument that smoking-related illness cost government money is also misdirection.''
That maybe the case in the USA but private studies have been conducted here,Italy,Greece and France (privately funded,no relation with the government whatsoever) and yes there is a cost when it comes to smoking-related illness.
Take my cough medicine i use to take all the time back when i was a smoker,since my healthcare covered 50% of the value of that cough medicine i only paid about 5 euros so where does the rest of the money come from? they have to make up for that 50%.
FYI since i stopped smoking i have not bought that cough medicine syrup ever again.
As i said before in my previous post,just talking about what is happening at the moment in Spain.
Some things will remain the same regardless of what country you are in,as you said earlier ''politicians protecting their power & finances by doing the bidding of those who finance them, primarily the pharma and medical industries.''
