Interesting. I went and read the study which does support what the NYT is saying more or less [1]. The main factor as to why this is the case is important thou

Interesting. I went and read the study which does support what the NYT is saying more or less [1]. The main factor as to why this is the case is important though. The longer you live the more costs you incur on the system because you end up getting another sickness which costs a lot more to treat, they specifically quote Alzheimers, than obesity and lung cancer. One thing they did not take into account though is the lack of productivity i.e. the costs of being disabled (possibly b/c it is a dutch study using dutch data and parameters), in the USA diabetes is a disability and incurs significant other costs on the system which were not taken into account. It would be interesting to see what the comparisons would look like once that is taken into account. But its certainly the case that smoking is much cheaper overall. It doesn't lead to disabilities and people die younger and incur far less costs. [1] http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0050029 http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jou...