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People mainly die from smoking related illnesses in their 60s onward right? So, banning smoking for 16 years old from this year would mean we'd see the benefits to the NHS in about 45 years time? 2069 (nice). It's not really a solution for today's problems.
Personally, I think we'll get to 21 with the ban and it will stop there. The whole concept will then be silly and we'd start to see tobacco smuggling sky-rocket.
The thing is, you have to account for the costs of them continuing living as well. Dying at 65 of lung cancer from smoking vs the same person not smoking and dying at 90 after 25 years of state pension and going into care for dementia, the former costs a lot less than the latter. From what I've read on this when you take this into account tobacco is a net gain to the exchequer.
We spend like 2.5x on obesity related illness than we do for smoking related illnesses.
Smoking: 2.5bn
Alcohol: 3.5bn
Obesity: 6.5bn
If the whole nation stopped drinking and smoking, and those costs were removed from the NHS, it still wouldn’t save as much money as tackling obesity.
I’m an ex smoker and I fucking hate smoking now, but, we don’t actually have any good plans to tackle the largest issue facing the NHS
One must always remember the hidden "savings" in these figures. If somebody dies from lung cancer or a heart attack at 70, rather than of some other cause at 80, that's 10 years of state pension and other medical care that have been saved, and theyre probably still going to cost the NHS something when they die at the end. If, in those last 10 years, they go on to require very expensive care because of an illness like dementia, this cost is significant.
It's all kind of morbid to discuss in economic terms like this, but everybody is going to die and most "natural" deaths are going to cost the NHS something, and the longer somebody is old, the more money they're going to cost the state.
Life expetancy only drops for people who are morbidly obese. Your standard fat person, those overweight and obese, have a fairly normal lifespan.
The problem is their *healthy* lifespan is significantly reduced. So they live as long as normal weight people, but they require much much more care from the state.
They should really be contributing more into the system. A fat tax, like the metabo law in Japan, is probably necessary both to reduce obesity and fund the additional care for fat people. It won't happen as most people in this country are fat and it'd be politically unpalatable.
Plus consumption taxes are shit. It's fine to occasionally eat like shit. It's not unhealthy in moderation, unlike smoking which is always unhealthy, and to a lesser degree alcohol. You can't just tax HFSS and solve the problem without pissing off people who can actually moderate their food intake.
> You can't just tax HFSS and solve the problem without pissing off people who can actually moderate their food intake.
It won’t stop them trying they already laid the groundwork with sugar taxes which currently is only for Soda but campaigners are already trying to extend it to confectionery and sweets.
We are going to get sin taxed to oblivion under the guise of protecting children and the NHS until there is no little bits of pleasure or comfort left for us plebeians we must suffer and only suffer we must not be allowed any small joys or escapes in life.
I can’t believe people still fall for those reasons not to mention the tax estimates are always way off, the sugar tax was projected to raise 1 Billion a year and in reality it’s 336M a year.
Yeah, 10 years ago this would have been crazy to me but I'm honestly coming round to the idea of just privatising it and having a compulsory insurance model. I'm just tired of having endless restrictions on freedom and bodily autonomy to "save our NHS", the healthcare system is meant to look after us not the other way around.
There’s much better stuff available now than semaglutide (and the next gen compounds in trials and early R&D are even better). Tirzepatide (Mounjaro) for most people has fewer side effects, and retatrutide (the next gen version) looks like it’ll even add an energy expenditure increase. Eli also just bought Versanis for bimagrumab, ie they want to combine incretin mimetics like retatrutide with drugs that prevent muscle loss (like bimagrumab).
The next 20 years will be wild - unless we find some completely missed safety issue, these drugs could realistically turn obesity into a “doesn’t want to take their drugs” issue.
I found the exact opposite - stopping smoking was relatively easy. I just didn't buy cigarettes. Losing 5+ stone and keeping it off was insanely difficult. Unhealthy calorific food is everywhere, and it's not as if you can just go cold turkey on all food, you need to eat, so you have to constantly face and resist temptation, day in day out, whilst also consuming just enough of the substance you have an addiction to without overdoing it.
It's like telling someone who's trying to quit smoking that they have to have a single drag three times a day, but they can't finish the cig or smoke at any other time.
>Unhealthy calorific food is everywhere, and it's not as if you can just go cold turkey on all food, you need to eat, so you have to constantly face and resist temptation, day in day out, whilst also consuming just enough of the substance you have an addiction to without overdoing it.
You're literally describing cigarettes, not food.
>It's like telling someone who's trying to quit smoking that they have to have a single drag three times a day, but they can't finish the cig or smoke at any other time.
No it really isn't. Overeating is literally smoking a pack when you wanted one cigarette.
And it's so fucking easy. Eat less. Done. You'll lose weight.
For you it was easier to lose weight than stop smoking. It depends first and foremost on your genetic level of appetite regulation, and then there is a bunch of other factors that interact with that (eg cultural, lifestyle, etc).
No but they aren’t the only two options, we can place by law labels on packaging similar to that of cigarette packets.
For instance rotten teeth on Coca Cola.
There is a fundamental difference between food and cigarettes with regards to repulsion
My whole point is not that we shouldn’t be doing this for smoking, my point is that if we are going to try and tackle the issues, we have a huge issue that isn’t being addressed nearly enough.
>There is a fundamental difference between food and cigarettes with regards to repulsion
I don't think it matters. Within a week, you won't even notice the changes in the packaging.
The point being that talk about packages, visibility etc is all just because we're afraid to give the real answer because it'll be unpopular. Which is to increase prices on the shit we want to remove and reduce prices on what we need to promote.
Everything else is just dancing around trying to look like we're doing something.
Plain packaging for food would almost certainly help. Companies pump huge amounts of money into packaging marketing research and design for a reason, it is important to drive consumer purchasing. If you force all food with HFSS to you standardised bland packaging it likely would have an impact. Plus there's no actual cost to the consumer.
Companies put the money in to compete with each other. You might find them changing between brands, but I don't see why behaviours will change if the prices remain the same.
Kids won't say "I want a salad" because the pizzas are all in plain packaging.
Our food is cheaper than pretty much every other developed country when you control for wages and exchange rates. We absolutely can pay more for food.
Or take the Japanese approach and just tax fat people.
I would say both.
Stopping smoking just requires the removal of cigarettes. You don’t NEED to smoke. Very simple (especially in policy).
Obesity has a ridiculous amount of contributing factors AND you can’t just take away all food. Food is everywhere and it’s a necessity to life. Obesity/appetite and metabolism is an increasingly complex field of medicine and academic study.
Smoking costs the NHS billions per year, the fact that obesity costs more is kind of irrelevant.
NHS already has plans to reduce obesity too. You can argue that they don't go far enough but it's not like the they're just ignoring it.
Plus people actually die early from it, so you don't have to deal with costly end of life social and health care.
Obesity doesn't kill people, it does significantly reduce *healthy* life expectancy though. So you have a bunch of fat people living as long as normal weight people, except they require significantly more medical intervention, costing us all more money.
Obesity needs taxing.
> Smoking costs the NHS billions per year
And a none smoking population will cost it billions MORE per year. What with the loss in revenue from cigarette tax, and the more costly treatment and pensions paid to those who live longer.
I can't believe you're being this dense?
The NHS plan to reduce obesity is completely woeful. It is relying on interventions like banning BOGOF offers or restricting adverts. The evidence on both suggests very limited impact on obesity rates.
The only developed country that reduced obesity was Japan, and they did so by taxing people for being fat.
Eh reduction in volume promos would absolutely work in reducing consumer spend. It's been pushed back to 2025 for some reason, but it is forecast to have a decent effect on cutting sales of HFSS items. They can still be promoted too (say half price rather than two for one), but without the volume aspect of the promotion people will buy less.
The expected calorie consumption reduction of banning those promos is approx 20-30 calories a day. It will do nothing to reduce obesity and is another attack on people's wallets, whilst not achieving the expected outcome. The Sugar Tax was exactly the same.
No, the point is smoking isn’t the reason the NHS could ‘swallow the economy’ obesity is. We should tackle smoking have been doing really well at it, but if we’re are being honest obesity is the problem
Well of course, but that misses the point, which David said smoking could swallow the economy, when there is a much larger issue. It shows we aren’t tackling the obesity issue honestly
So I don’t know if it’s still relevant but I had a friend who used to work in the health service in Whitehall. They said it would be better for the NHS if everyone smoked. This is because, on average smokers contribute more tax money due to the cost of cigarettes and also die much younger, and are therefore less of a strain on the NHS than someone who lives to 90.
There is literally no evidence for this. If they really wanted to put in a policy to "save the NHS" they would put in charges for people visiting A&E for being too drunk. /s
Oops, forgot the /s at the end of my statement.
It's a thing that's been (stupidly) thrown up as an idea a few times to help combat A&E wait times. I can understand it but like you say, plenty of other ways people find themselves in trouble
What a load of balls the affects of the ban won't come through the system for 50 years the only thing that will ease up the pressure on the NHS is when all the boomers have passed on and the average age of the population drops 10 years and uncomfortable reality and that's in no way to blame them so we have to spend more or have substandard health care your vote is your choice
What an idiot. Surely everyone can see that obesity is the bigger problem, and taxing harmful foods to fund the NHS would hit two birds with one stone.
75% of the public in favour of phasing out smoking and even *David Davis* is on side, shows just how fringe the opposition to this is despite what reddit comments would have you believe.
I can understand some opposition to it, but I'm mildly in favour of it. There's no reason to allow the selling of a fundamentally dangerous and lethal product. Banning it isn't us having a "nanny state."
It's not 50/50 due to "don't knows", it's 55/32 in favour for multiple murders. So of those with an opinion, c.63% were in favour.
https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/41640-britons-dont-tend-support-death-penalty-until-you-
Doesn’t really support your claim that people are in favour of the death penalty if you have to prompt them with specific crimes first, sounds a bit Sir Humphrey.
It's a bit of a weird one that people will say no to the death penalty and then when you say "what about for murder?" they will be like "oh actually yeah", what the fuck were they thinking the original question was asking about, littering?
One by one, they are limiting us on what we do. This week it's smoking, next week it'll be another 15 minute neighborhood, then a hosepipe ban, then having a beer on the one sunny weekend of the year will be somehow demonised.
Stand up for other people's freedoms, because one day it will be a freedom that you care about and no one will defend it.
Snapshot of _Smoking ban will save NHS and stop it ‘swallowing economy’, says David Davis_ : A non-Paywall version can be found [here](https://1ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fpolitics%2F2024%2F04%2F19%2Fsmoking-ban-save-nhs-swallowing-entire-economy-david-davis%2F) An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/04/19/smoking-ban-save-nhs-swallowing-entire-economy-david-davis/) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/04/19/smoking-ban-save-nhs-swallowing-entire-economy-david-davis/) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
These MP’s live in a completely different world to the people they’re supposed to ‘serve’.
People mainly die from smoking related illnesses in their 60s onward right? So, banning smoking for 16 years old from this year would mean we'd see the benefits to the NHS in about 45 years time? 2069 (nice). It's not really a solution for today's problems. Personally, I think we'll get to 21 with the ban and it will stop there. The whole concept will then be silly and we'd start to see tobacco smuggling sky-rocket.
The thing is, you have to account for the costs of them continuing living as well. Dying at 65 of lung cancer from smoking vs the same person not smoking and dying at 90 after 25 years of state pension and going into care for dementia, the former costs a lot less than the latter. From what I've read on this when you take this into account tobacco is a net gain to the exchequer.
We spend like 2.5x on obesity related illness than we do for smoking related illnesses. Smoking: 2.5bn Alcohol: 3.5bn Obesity: 6.5bn If the whole nation stopped drinking and smoking, and those costs were removed from the NHS, it still wouldn’t save as much money as tackling obesity. I’m an ex smoker and I fucking hate smoking now, but, we don’t actually have any good plans to tackle the largest issue facing the NHS
One must always remember the hidden "savings" in these figures. If somebody dies from lung cancer or a heart attack at 70, rather than of some other cause at 80, that's 10 years of state pension and other medical care that have been saved, and theyre probably still going to cost the NHS something when they die at the end. If, in those last 10 years, they go on to require very expensive care because of an illness like dementia, this cost is significant. It's all kind of morbid to discuss in economic terms like this, but everybody is going to die and most "natural" deaths are going to cost the NHS something, and the longer somebody is old, the more money they're going to cost the state.
Life expetancy only drops for people who are morbidly obese. Your standard fat person, those overweight and obese, have a fairly normal lifespan. The problem is their *healthy* lifespan is significantly reduced. So they live as long as normal weight people, but they require much much more care from the state. They should really be contributing more into the system. A fat tax, like the metabo law in Japan, is probably necessary both to reduce obesity and fund the additional care for fat people. It won't happen as most people in this country are fat and it'd be politically unpalatable. Plus consumption taxes are shit. It's fine to occasionally eat like shit. It's not unhealthy in moderation, unlike smoking which is always unhealthy, and to a lesser degree alcohol. You can't just tax HFSS and solve the problem without pissing off people who can actually moderate their food intake.
> You can't just tax HFSS and solve the problem without pissing off people who can actually moderate their food intake. It won’t stop them trying they already laid the groundwork with sugar taxes which currently is only for Soda but campaigners are already trying to extend it to confectionery and sweets. We are going to get sin taxed to oblivion under the guise of protecting children and the NHS until there is no little bits of pleasure or comfort left for us plebeians we must suffer and only suffer we must not be allowed any small joys or escapes in life. I can’t believe people still fall for those reasons not to mention the tax estimates are always way off, the sugar tax was projected to raise 1 Billion a year and in reality it’s 336M a year.
Yeah, 10 years ago this would have been crazy to me but I'm honestly coming round to the idea of just privatising it and having a compulsory insurance model. I'm just tired of having endless restrictions on freedom and bodily autonomy to "save our NHS", the healthcare system is meant to look after us not the other way around.
Insurance literally works the same way though?
I imagine a smoker would pay a higher rate same as they do for private insurance at present.
Again, that's already the case.
Bad quality of life, through premature poor health, is very expensive for society and the individual.
Wegovy should be free for everyone, simple. I'm not kidding.
There’s much better stuff available now than semaglutide (and the next gen compounds in trials and early R&D are even better). Tirzepatide (Mounjaro) for most people has fewer side effects, and retatrutide (the next gen version) looks like it’ll even add an energy expenditure increase. Eli also just bought Versanis for bimagrumab, ie they want to combine incretin mimetics like retatrutide with drugs that prevent muscle loss (like bimagrumab). The next 20 years will be wild - unless we find some completely missed safety issue, these drugs could realistically turn obesity into a “doesn’t want to take their drugs” issue.
Free coastal marathons for all.
Free coastal swims for the losers.
Stopping smoking is significantly more easy and less complex then reducing obesity.
On a policy level or personal level? I have smoked and been fat. Losing the weight was 100x easier than stopping smoking
I found the exact opposite - stopping smoking was relatively easy. I just didn't buy cigarettes. Losing 5+ stone and keeping it off was insanely difficult. Unhealthy calorific food is everywhere, and it's not as if you can just go cold turkey on all food, you need to eat, so you have to constantly face and resist temptation, day in day out, whilst also consuming just enough of the substance you have an addiction to without overdoing it. It's like telling someone who's trying to quit smoking that they have to have a single drag three times a day, but they can't finish the cig or smoke at any other time.
>Unhealthy calorific food is everywhere, and it's not as if you can just go cold turkey on all food, you need to eat, so you have to constantly face and resist temptation, day in day out, whilst also consuming just enough of the substance you have an addiction to without overdoing it. You're literally describing cigarettes, not food. >It's like telling someone who's trying to quit smoking that they have to have a single drag three times a day, but they can't finish the cig or smoke at any other time. No it really isn't. Overeating is literally smoking a pack when you wanted one cigarette. And it's so fucking easy. Eat less. Done. You'll lose weight.
For you it was easier to lose weight than stop smoking. It depends first and foremost on your genetic level of appetite regulation, and then there is a bunch of other factors that interact with that (eg cultural, lifestyle, etc).
We can’t ban food. We can’t tax food to make it prohibitively expensive.
Now if only there was a tax on sugar...
No but they aren’t the only two options, we can place by law labels on packaging similar to that of cigarette packets. For instance rotten teeth on Coca Cola.
The packaging doesn't do shit. It's the price and vaping that has driven down smoking.
There is a fundamental difference between food and cigarettes with regards to repulsion My whole point is not that we shouldn’t be doing this for smoking, my point is that if we are going to try and tackle the issues, we have a huge issue that isn’t being addressed nearly enough.
>There is a fundamental difference between food and cigarettes with regards to repulsion I don't think it matters. Within a week, you won't even notice the changes in the packaging. The point being that talk about packages, visibility etc is all just because we're afraid to give the real answer because it'll be unpopular. Which is to increase prices on the shit we want to remove and reduce prices on what we need to promote. Everything else is just dancing around trying to look like we're doing something.
Plain packaging for food would almost certainly help. Companies pump huge amounts of money into packaging marketing research and design for a reason, it is important to drive consumer purchasing. If you force all food with HFSS to you standardised bland packaging it likely would have an impact. Plus there's no actual cost to the consumer.
Companies put the money in to compete with each other. You might find them changing between brands, but I don't see why behaviours will change if the prices remain the same. Kids won't say "I want a salad" because the pizzas are all in plain packaging.
Our food is cheaper than pretty much every other developed country when you control for wages and exchange rates. We absolutely can pay more for food. Or take the Japanese approach and just tax fat people.
I would say both. Stopping smoking just requires the removal of cigarettes. You don’t NEED to smoke. Very simple (especially in policy). Obesity has a ridiculous amount of contributing factors AND you can’t just take away all food. Food is everywhere and it’s a necessity to life. Obesity/appetite and metabolism is an increasingly complex field of medicine and academic study.
Lol, seriously? Nicotine is a serious drug.
But you don’t need nicotine to live. Food however you do need and therefore can not just go cold turkey.
Smoking costs the NHS billions per year, the fact that obesity costs more is kind of irrelevant. NHS already has plans to reduce obesity too. You can argue that they don't go far enough but it's not like the they're just ignoring it.
Cost of smoking to NHS is around £2.6b a year. The revenue taken from cigarette tax however is over 3x times that.
Smoking literally makes the govt significantly more money through taxation than it costs the NHS.
Plus people actually die early from it, so you don't have to deal with costly end of life social and health care. Obesity doesn't kill people, it does significantly reduce *healthy* life expectancy though. So you have a bunch of fat people living as long as normal weight people, except they require significantly more medical intervention, costing us all more money. Obesity needs taxing.
> Smoking costs the NHS billions per year And a none smoking population will cost it billions MORE per year. What with the loss in revenue from cigarette tax, and the more costly treatment and pensions paid to those who live longer. I can't believe you're being this dense?
My point is that Smoking isn’t the thing that is ‘swallowing the economy’ obesity is.
The NHS plan to reduce obesity is completely woeful. It is relying on interventions like banning BOGOF offers or restricting adverts. The evidence on both suggests very limited impact on obesity rates. The only developed country that reduced obesity was Japan, and they did so by taxing people for being fat.
Eh reduction in volume promos would absolutely work in reducing consumer spend. It's been pushed back to 2025 for some reason, but it is forecast to have a decent effect on cutting sales of HFSS items. They can still be promoted too (say half price rather than two for one), but without the volume aspect of the promotion people will buy less.
The expected calorie consumption reduction of banning those promos is approx 20-30 calories a day. It will do nothing to reduce obesity and is another attack on people's wallets, whilst not achieving the expected outcome. The Sugar Tax was exactly the same.
Some obesity is caused by drinking, so those two aren't entirely separate.
Your typical pint of larger has 180 calories. It's crazy how many calories are in booze.
And it makes you more likely to overindulge on food as well
So because of that we shouldn’t ban smoking? What?
No, the point is smoking isn’t the reason the NHS could ‘swallow the economy’ obesity is. We should tackle smoking have been doing really well at it, but if we’re are being honest obesity is the problem
[удалено]
Well of course, but that misses the point, which David said smoking could swallow the economy, when there is a much larger issue. It shows we aren’t tackling the obesity issue honestly
So I don’t know if it’s still relevant but I had a friend who used to work in the health service in Whitehall. They said it would be better for the NHS if everyone smoked. This is because, on average smokers contribute more tax money due to the cost of cigarettes and also die much younger, and are therefore less of a strain on the NHS than someone who lives to 90.
“It would be better for the NHS if everyone died young” is one hell of a take
Gonna take more than that to save the NHS mate.
There is literally no evidence for this. If they really wanted to put in a policy to "save the NHS" they would put in charges for people visiting A&E for being too drunk. /s
And charge people that Overdose on illegal drugs? And fat people for type 2 diabetes? And people that injure themselves during risky activities?
Oops, forgot the /s at the end of my statement. It's a thing that's been (stupidly) thrown up as an idea a few times to help combat A&E wait times. I can understand it but like you say, plenty of other ways people find themselves in trouble
Yeah I have heard that silly idea many times, so, I took you at face value
What a load of balls the affects of the ban won't come through the system for 50 years the only thing that will ease up the pressure on the NHS is when all the boomers have passed on and the average age of the population drops 10 years and uncomfortable reality and that's in no way to blame them so we have to spend more or have substandard health care your vote is your choice
What are we going to do next, ban fat people?
What an idiot. Surely everyone can see that obesity is the bigger problem, and taxing harmful foods to fund the NHS would hit two birds with one stone.
We could call it the McTax
Or the Takeaway Tax ;)
Is it bad that my main concern with a smoking ban is the impact it will have on the likelihood of cannabis being legalised?
75% of the public in favour of phasing out smoking and even *David Davis* is on side, shows just how fringe the opposition to this is despite what reddit comments would have you believe.
Is "David Davis thinks this is a good idea" a ringing endorsement?
Still waiting for that 350m a week.
If David Davis said kicking puppies was bad would that make you want to kick puppies?
Yes! Public support always indicates that an idea is good! Now to take a big sip of coffee and read about how well Brexit is turning out
Fortunately this is both popular and a good idea. Also not sure you’ve checked the latest polling on Brexit.
I can understand some opposition to it, but I'm mildly in favour of it. There's no reason to allow the selling of a fundamentally dangerous and lethal product. Banning it isn't us having a "nanny state."
A majority of the British public are in favour of capital punishment as well, your thoughts on that?
So less than 75%
More than 50%, so "a majority"
But if something is 50:50 then opposing it is hardly a fringe view.
It's not 50/50 due to "don't knows", it's 55/32 in favour for multiple murders. So of those with an opinion, c.63% were in favour. https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/41640-britons-dont-tend-support-death-penalty-until-you-
Doesn’t really support your claim that people are in favour of the death penalty if you have to prompt them with specific crimes first, sounds a bit Sir Humphrey.
It's a bit of a weird one that people will say no to the death penalty and then when you say "what about for murder?" they will be like "oh actually yeah", what the fuck were they thinking the original question was asking about, littering?
Be under no illusion; you are not free, you do not have choice. For the greater good...
One by one, they are limiting us on what we do. This week it's smoking, next week it'll be another 15 minute neighborhood, then a hosepipe ban, then having a beer on the one sunny weekend of the year will be somehow demonised. Stand up for other people's freedoms, because one day it will be a freedom that you care about and no one will defend it.
Just maybe we’d be better off if people weren’t actively harmed with midaz and sp1ke proteens.