Quote:
Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos
Can a supporter of this law tell me how they (or anyone else) benefits from this?
|
I don't really support the law, but I'll take a stab at building an argument in favour of it.
1. The harder it is to acquire smokes, the fewer people smoke.
2. Pulmonary disease treatment (not including lung cancer) costs in Canada exceeded 5.7 billion dollars in direct costs and another 6.72 billion in indirect costs. Granted, not all of these are smoking-related, but a significant portion of them are.
Source:
http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/publicat/...agisme-eng.php
3. Total taxes collected from Tobacco in Canada, provincial and federal combined in 2007-2008 were 6.8 billion. This does not cover the combined direct and indirect costs of pulmonary disease treatment in Canada.
Source:
http://www.smoke-free.ca/factsheets/pdf/totaltax.pdf
4. Reducing the number of smokers will reduce health-care costs. Something that every Canadian pays for.
The issue with this argument is that it ultimately hinges on the first proposition, that making it harder to get smokes reduces smoking. I have no idea whether this is accurate or not, or if there are any statistics to prove or disprove it.
But there's the argument.
Also, to simply throw some numbers at the drunk-driving argument, in 2002 there were 37,209 tobacco-attributable deaths in Canada. The number of Canadians killed in alcohol-related accidents in 2002 was 909 (however, this number is acknowledged to be an underestimate).