When one door shuts another opens
Am I alone in thinking that this week’s news, courtesy of the Institute of Economic Affairs who should know a bit about such things, that – far from worrying about the costs of setting up and delivering comprehensive NHS treatments for all our friends who smoke, drink and eat far too much, as the ‘good-two-shoes-PC-correct-Nanny-State-campaigning-media-busybodies’ are always demanding – we should actually be celebrating their unhealthy lifestyle choices because of the taxes they bring in, may be in fact be a positive and most welcome departure?
According to the IEA, Britain’s finances would be £22.8 billion worse off if there was no drinking, smoking or obesity.
They reach this conclusion by claiming that although the costs of cancer treatment, house fires and cleaning up cigarette butts on the streets of the UK costs up to £4.6 billion every year, the nation’s smoking habit actually brings in more than three times that figure in taxes.
Apparently, in total the UK’s ‘sin taxes’ (the total costs of treating smoking, drinking and obesity) bring in over £24 billion per annum to the UK economy.
On top of this, of course – in the wider context one of the UK’s biggest long-term problems going forward – statistically our hard drinking, hard smoking, fatty pals do the decent thing and die much earlier than the rest of us, thus saving the nation huge sums in benefits, treatments and pensions that otherwise the Treasury might have had to pay out had they lived to a ripe old age.
In short, as my grandpappy used to tell anyone who would listen – from his rocking chair in the corner of the room, taking out his pipe out of his mouth and spluttering as he did so – far from running half-baked campaigns trying to scaremonger people into quitting smoking and eating junk foods, the Government should instead impose immediate ceilings on cigarette, hard liquor and junk food prices and make smoking, drinking and force-feeding of burgers and chips compulsory in all UK primary schools.
I’m not saying that Grandad always got everything right but, when you think about it, perhaps his general thrust wasn’t too wide of the mark and even now might just give the nation a route forward to an eternal future of ever-flowing milk and honey.
Hell, if we were only to mount a Government-backed, middling cost (say £10 million), marketing campaign with the slogan “Keep smoking, drinking and eating: you know it makes sense!”, within about a decade and a half we could not only have mitigated any costs of Brexit but possibly also built a Eurotunnel equivalent going direct from Holyhead to Dublin so that the rest of us [i.e. the non-smokers, drinkers in moderation only and Waitrose shoppers/gastro pub customers] could enjoy the delights of our annual holidays in Ireland more easily and at significantly lesser cost than we do now …
