11 ms·
How profitable was/is tobacco?
- SiempreViernes 5y agoAll that profit and the only "downside" is causing one in five deaths in the US (before covid)! https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/health_effects/tobacco_related_mortality/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/heal...
- twofornone 5y agoI feel like this is misleading because it's not like 1 in 5 people who smoke are dropping dead from a deadly poison. More like after 30-60 years of daily tobacco use someone dies a few years before life expectancy of cancer and/or heart/lung disease. It's an important distinction, because otherwise the danger of tobacco and culpability of tobacco companies are exaggerated. For many people a lifetime of pleasure from nicotine justifies the risk.
- nuclearnice1 5y agoYour post is posed as a plea to avoid misleading information. You wrote: “dies a few years before life expectancy” The article in the comment you reply to writes “Life expectancy for smokers is at least 10 years shorter than for nonsmokers”
- csee 5y agoIt's terrible but not all of that is because of smoking. Smokers are often also drinkers, drug users, bad eaters, and just generally unhealthy people.
- nuclearnice1 5y agoTrue. But doesn’t change that twofornone’s estimate of effect on mortality was incorrect.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ohdannyboy 5y agoI don't know a single old smoker who thinks that. My grandfather, great uncle and others acknowledged their shitty older years were their own damn fault but they urged me to never start. There was no "make a choice" or "it's worth it to some people." I've only heard younger smokers say that but I don't think they've internalized how bad it's going to be.
- Ma8ee 5y agoMaybe on average it's only a few years. But some smokers live to old age, and some die of lung cancer in their early forties while their kids are still young.
- yokaze 5y agoSome details, which are in my view not unimportant: - The tobacco use is not only affecting the person "choosing the lifetime of pleasure", but their surroundings too, thanks to second hand smoke. - Nicotine is highly addictive: "The majority of smokers would like to stop smoking, and each year about half try to quit permanently. Yet, only about 6 percent of smokers are able to quit in a given year" [1] For me, that makes it highly questionable, if that is a voluntary choice. I know enough people, which have chosen to indulge in that particular pleasure, and after decades of abstinence still have to put a conscious effort into not relapsing (in certain situations). [1] https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/tobacco-nicotine-e-cigarettes/nicotine-addictive https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/toba...
- betwixthewires 5y agoWell, secondhand smoke is not an issue when one smokes only outside away from others or only in the company of other smokers, and I think a significant portion of people who try to quit smoking do so because of the potentially overstated risk pointed out in the comment you're responding to, or the artificially inflated cost due to sin tax imposed and justified by that potentially overstated risk. Would those people try to quit if they calculated the cost more accurately? That said, I'm an ex smoker, and I'm glad I quit, and I will never touch a cigarette again. To me it was not so much the risk of very early death as it was the impact on my health for however many years I will remain alive, the financial cost (imposed by governments) and the fact that I came to hate smoking cigarettes and got no pleasure from it whatsoever (which is not the case with nicotine in general or other forms of tobacco such as cigars, which I do enjoy once or twice a year).
- Talanes 5y agoI imagine there's also some false positives from people who know that "wanting to quit" is the more socially acceptable answer.
- version_five 5y agoI think the second hand smoke thing was largely overblown to make it an "us vs them" thing rather than letting smoking be a personal choice. Smoking is a terrible habit, I hate being around people who are smoking, but I really think that modern anti smoking campaigns were less about health and more about puritan values, and not being able to stand the idea of someone else enjoying themselves in ways you disagree with. We see this regularly but it usually doesn't get enough traction to matter. The "dangers of second hand smoke" happened to be what finally stuck. From what I understand, anti smoking campaigns have actually had a positive impact on life expectancy in western countries. On that metric, this is a positive thing. Personally I don't believe it outweighs the ills of allowing others to tell you what to do in the name of your health. I actually think all of the covid craziness can trace itself back to some extent to when we gave in and banner indoor smoking in most places. You start letting people make rules "for your safety" (and try to spin it so it's really about others) and next thing you know we've got the current hysteria as a popular thing. Edit, because everyone that's replied so far has missed the point. I dont mean second hand smoke is pleasant. The rhetoric used to make allowing or disallowing smoking not a business decision but a state mandate, is that it was killing people. This was overblown, and is a completely different bar than "it smells bad and gives me a headache" - I agree with that, but its unreasonable to argue the state should be telling people what they can't do because of it. I'd sooner see Axe body spray outlawed on those grounds, but again, it's not the states business.
- tshaddox 5y agoIt’s not really an important distinction, because all deaths are deaths that would have happened later anyway.
- dncornholio 5y agoAt least they die peacefully and not danger other people. Alcohol causes way more harm. Let people smoke if they want. It doesn't bother me as long as they do it respectfully and away from non-smokers.
- devwastaken 5y agoNo actions live in a bubble. Wether we like it or not what you and I do affect each other. Certain things we should protect for people to do individually, and others should not be. How that is weighed is based on the level of harm. The cost of medical and other socioeconomic issues in individuals that smoke, along with them harming others through second hand smoke is a far larger cost to society. Therefore, we tax it.
- erulabs 5y agoNot pushing one way or the other, but it's important to consider the framing: Ignoring the second-hand smoke complexity for a moment, if everyone pays for every one else's health, then of course we should ban or tax cigarettes and/or anything that causes excess harm to a single person that others have to pay for (taxes help cover the externality). However, if each individual pays for the entirety of their own health-care costs, then it is far less obvious what actions should be taken. To put it another way, if I was in command of an army, I wouldn't allow smoking or various unhealthy or time-wasting activities. China wants a higher GDP: ban all the video games! This sort of social-engineering is _possibly_ for the best, and possibly for the worse, but I think it's a bit of an injustice to just state "well we all have to pay for each other's health so the policy should be ______". We don't necessarily have to all pay for each others health. Absolutes aside, a smoker should have higher insurance costs than a non-smoker. If we all had to pay for each others hobbies, for example, you'd bet there would be folks trying to get cloud-watching banned in favor of something productive like knitting. This sort of social planning rarely works out how one expects it to.
- Clubber 5y agoI would argue in the US, that sort of thing benefits corporate healthcare more than anything. Nobody wants other people telling them what to do. In other words, the more people say we're going to ban ______ because I don't want to pay for your risky lifestyle through my healthcare taxes, the less likely universal healthcare will ever be a thing in the US. If we really want universal healthcare, we should allow everyone to join, thus the universal part. But people like to preach to other people, so Que Será, Será.
- systemvoltage 5y agoHow many deaths does smoking marijuana cause?
- hn_throwaway_99 5y agoMarijuana is much less damaging to the lungs than tobacco smoke: https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2012/01/98519/marijuana-shown-be-less-damaging-lungs-tobacco https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2012/01/98519/marijuana-shown-be-l...
- systemvoltage 5y ago> Whether smoking marijuana causes lung cancer, as cigarette smoking does, remains an open question. https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/marijuana/what-are-marijuanas-effects-lung-health https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/mari...
- burnished 5y agoGonna have a hard time trusting information from 'drugabuse.gov', given our nations shakey history with drugs. Egg on my face for saying that though given this quote from a little further down than yours "However, while a few small, uncontrolled studies have suggested that heavy, regular marijuana smoking could increase risk for respiratory cancers, well-designed population studies have failed to find an increased risk of lung cancer associated with marijuana use."
- ac29 5y agoThats not exactly what it says: “An important factor that helps explain the difference in effects from these two substances is the amount of each that is typically smoked,” Pletcher said. “Tobacco users typically smoke ten to 20 cigarettes/day, and some smoke much more than that. Marijuana users, on average, smoke only two to three times a month, so the typical exposure to marijuana is much lower than for tobacco.”
- NilsIRL 5y agoAnd there are also (naturally) economic downsides as well: The costing model in this study covers three areas where smoking has been shown to create ‘external’ costs: the direct costs to European public healthcare systems in a given year; productivity loss to the EU27 economy due to increased absenteeism; and the monetised cost of premature mortality Taking the three main cost factors together, the loss to the EU in 2000 is estimated to be at approximately €363 billion. This figure corresponds to about 3.4% of the EU27 GDP. https://ec.europa.eu/health/sites/default/files/tobacco/docs/tobacco_liability_final_en.pdf https://ec.europa.eu/health/sites/default/files/tobacco/docs...
- listenallyall 5y agoSeems like some double dipping here. Not familiar with the EU patterns, but if seniors & retired people receive income from public sources, like Social Security in the US, then premature mortality results in a big savings, not additional costs.
- saiya-jin 5y agoMany smokers don't die suddenly. Even with heart attack/stroke, many will end up living for a next decade or two on daily expensive medicine and frail health. Those going down with cancer will cost literally tons of money due to high cost long treatments. There is no cheap cancer medicine. The idea smoking actually cuts down social costs is laughable and doesn't make any financial sense.
- listenallyall 5y ago> The idea smoking actually cuts down social costs is laughable I never claimed this. I am stating however, that it would appear that the proper equation for the referenced article should be healthcare costs + productivity loss - premature mortality, not the sum of all 3. I would not expect that the total is anywhere close to net negative, but I would expect it to be less than the reported €363 billion.
- refurb 5y ago
- intrepidhero 5y agoYeah, wow. No mention of external costs makes this an incredibly naive analysis. What's the name for the fallacy of getting distracted by dollar signs to the point of ignoring downsides? "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch" is a truism for a reason.
- personjerry 5y agoWhat are the external costs?
- Hjfrf 5y agoHealthcare is the big one
- Iefthandrule 5y agoWho gets the profit vs who pays for the costs?
- missedthecue 5y agoSmokers pay more for healthcare, at least in the US. That's an internalized cost, not an externality.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- more_corn 5y agoYou misunderstand what externalized means. Externalized cost means external to the manufacturer. It is a phrase used to refer to a method os extracting profit while harming society/humanity/the world. It literally means a cost born by someone other than the one profiting. The health cost is externalized for the producer because it is shifted to the consumers.
- missedthecue 5y ago
- joe_the_user 5y agoI'm always skeptical of an industry or business being inherently profitable in the context of a public stock/equity market. Sure, high profitability from the start is possible. But it seems like once you have an ongoing public company, whether growing or stable, the market is going to be pricing in future profits and that the profitability of the stock will tend toward average. Microsoft, Apple and Google, for example, have a tremendous venue stream and good prospects for the future ... so their stock prices are correspondingly high and investing in these stocks shouldn't be inherently better than investing on other stocks. Each fall, farmers supplied the leaf tobacco. How did they fare economically? Tobacco had the second highest profit per acre of any crop in the world. (Only a grove of an obscure exotic nut was higher.) Sure, I'm not even sure what matters here. Different land uses produce crops of higher or lower value. Land that can produce higher value crops is quite valuable, sure. So is land in Manhattan. Tobacco tended to be a monopoly, monopolies get a large revenue per capital invested. It's simpler to say tobacco was a large, concentrated industry producing an addictive drug. Any industry like tends to produce a lot of revenue per dollar invested and this is because industry leverage their connections or ability to navigate/manipulate regulators and the state.
- barney54 5y agoHow was tobacco a monopoly? And if it were a monopoly why was it profitable to farmers instead of the monopolist squeezing the farmers?
- netcan 5y ago>How was tobacco a monopoly. Philip Morris.
- monocasa 5y ago> How was tobacco a monopoly? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._American_Tobacco_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._American_Toba.... > And if it were a monopoly why was it profitable to farmers instead of the monopolist squeezing the farmers? The monopolists did squeeze the farmers. It was still profitable for the farmers, but under what a fair market rate would be. Just because you're getting paid enough to keep going doesn't mean you're getting a fair rate. It's sort of like the SF tech anti poaching. No one denies that SF engineers get paid a lot. That also doesn't mean that they didn't get shafted out of thousands by a wage fixing scheme.
- d0mine 5y agowow. The comments are just filled tobacco sympathizers. I thought the topic was closed after decades upon decades of research. My guess some people wouldn't mind to see the world burn tomorrow if they make profit today.
- dehrmann 5y agoParts of the tech scene have a libertarian bent.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- crocodiletears 5y agoDecades of research have illustrated the consequences of tobacco consumption. Science is descriptive, not prescriptive. The actions individuals and societies take based on that information are based on their own subjective values.
- nradov 5y agoIf adults want to make unhealthy choices and poison themselves then let them do it. And let farmers use their land to grow whatever they want. Does that make me a tobacco sympathizer?
- bigbillheck 5y ago> And let farmers use their land to grow whatever they want. Finally we'd be able to get blackcurrant in this country again. Shame about the pine blister rust and consequent devastation to forests and logging, but that's the price of freedom I guess.
- xref 5y agoMake Opium Great Again Seriously though both tobacco and a lot of other “whatever they want” crops have mountains of externalized costs and societal consequences
- deleted 5y ago
- lindseymysse 5y agoI've been reading Double Entry: How the Merchants of Venice Created Modern Finance by Jane Gleeson-White, and the last few chapters are an exploration of double entry accounting's inability to factor in environmental degradation and social costs. In the end, price and money are poor measures of important things in this world. Raj Patel estimates that the true cost of a Big Mac is $200: https://www.sfgate.com/books/article/The-Value-of-Nothing-by-Raj-Patel-3204083.php https://www.sfgate.com/books/article/The-Value-of-Nothing-by...
- nradov 5y agoThat's just nonsense and completely misses the point of accounting. If businesses are imposing unacceptable externalities on society then those need to be priced in using taxes.
- BizarroLand 5y ago"But," thought the savvy businessman, "if I don't get caught then what does it hurt, right? It is smart to not pay the government what they don't actively take from you..." and so he dumped the waste runoff from his plant into the local river and wasn't caught for 30 years, at which point he was fined 1/10 of 1% of the profits he would not have made without his economic larceny.
- lindseymysse 5y agoThe point of the book is that they aren't. Also, there is no real monetary value for environmental degradation. I'd recommend the book, it's very illuminating about the issue.
- qwertyuiop_ 5y agoSocial Media along with monopolistic ad giant Google is the new Tobacco.
- markdown 5y ago> Only a grove of an obscure exotic nut was higher. Anyone know which nut he's referring to?
- nemo44x 5y agoI suspect Macadamia. Take forever to begin producing and have limited environments they thrive in. But they bring in a fortune.
- jonnycomputer 5y agoTobacco farming also exhausted soils. https://bsc.poole.ncsu.edu/news/remembering-john-vollmer-a-champion-for-the-soil/ https://bsc.poole.ncsu.edu/news/remembering-john-vollmer-a-c...