Quote:
Originally Posted by Cowboy89
Beating a dead horse. Ultimately it's just premier mom proving her left wing street cred. The tobacco industry isn't coughing up $10 Billion to the province of Alberta, especially since the Tories favorite passtime to attempt to balance budgets is raising tobacco taxes. How much has the province collected in tobacco taxes over the years?
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This and every calculation I've seen seems to blame the entire cost of a smoker's death on smoking. Meanwhile, they ignore the fact that person would have eventually died of something.
Not that this happens in every case, but taking my grandparents as an example. One grandfather was a heavy smoker. He contracted lung cancer sometime in his 80s. He was dead within months. I had another grandfather who lived to be 98. He lived a healthy lifestyle. However, during those last 5 years or so, his body became riddled with cancers and diseases. He was in and out of hospitals constantly for the last 10 years of his life. Both of them quit workign in their late 60s, and hence stopped paying income tax.
I really don't know how you can conclude that the smoker was some kind of drain on society. Especially as smoker litterally pay thousands of dollars a year in taxes by buying cigarettes.