No Smoking Ever

[SueEllen]

In the USA they used to sell chewing tobacco however, it caused cancer of the mouth. Nicotine causes cancer.

Tobacco itself has cancer causing chemicals as well as nicotine.

On the nicotine replacement products particularly the ones that are only available on prescription they don't list cancer or an increased risk of cancer as a side effect. However there are plenty of other drugs that have cancer listed as being a direct or indirect side effect.

[edison]

People trot out these claims (on both sides) without any proof.
Apart from the obvious difficulty getting accurate figures what the NHS spends on "smoking related illness" (remember how many different ways we had to count Covid deaths), even if tax is more than NHS expenditure, that doesn't mean all that tax take goes to the NHS. Unless it's ring-fenced which seems like it could be a good idea?

But right now the NHS' big problem is not money, it's capacity. Big infrastructure projects - as many of you will know better than me in real life -can't simply be scaled quickly with even infinite cash. Reducing the volume of people needing treatment for smoking illnesses would effectively increase hospital capacity hugely.

It's not true there is no proof.

The government publishes the customs and excise duty figures. It was £10.27bn in 2021/22.

The figures for treating smoking related illnesses are calculated by Public Health England as part of their Tobacco Control Plan. You can argue about the methodology if you want but their figures show it costs the NHS about £2.5bn, about a quarter of the tax raised. Of course, their are other societal costs too, so its not so clear cut.

There are 6-7 million people waiting for NHS hospital treatment so even if you took half a million smokers out of the system, it still wouldn't come close to closing that capacity gap.

[_V_]

Smoking
Drinking
Meat/Dairy
Fossil Fuels

All need banning for everyone now!

[vetran]

Nicotine is a poison just like alcohol, the difference between vaping and smoking is all the stuff burning around it that is more carcinogenic.

If you drink vaping fluid you will end up in hospital or worse.

Neither are good but the general opinion is that vaping is less harmful than smoking especially if used as a method to quit smoking.

If someone is vaping near me I am much less likely to start coughing than if they are smoking.