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WHO PUFFS THE MOST? The percentage of adults who smoke |
Posted Sunday, Jan. 5, 2003; 2.02 p.m. GMT
That's particularly bad news for Europe's already overburdened health-care systems. Treating smoking diseases eats up €15.4 billion each year in Italy, €9.9 billion in France, €2.3 billion in Britain. Perversely, tobacco companies argue that the illness and premature death of smokers actually lighten the economic load of national health-care systems. A 2000 report commissioned by Philip Morris in the Czech Republic, for example, argued that early smoking-related deaths saved the national government $190 million a year at today's rates.
By that logic, governments make more income taxing smokers while they are alive than they spend on diseased smokers or lose in taxes when smokers die prematurely. The thesis — a favorite of industry lobbyists world-wide — is denounced by health officials as economic twaddle and a moral sham. "However we work it out," says Greek Deputy Health Minister Ektoras Nasiokas, "smoking is a huge cost."
Just as the tobacco industry is touchy on the subject of health costs, anti-tobacco activists aren't always pleased with tobacco-taxation schemes. They note that governments can become addicted to tobacco-tax revenues — curbing interest in efforts to discourage smoking. Taxes on tobacco products average around 75% per pack E.U.-wide — with a 2001 high of 81.6% in Denmark and low of 67.7% in Luxembourg. Revenue-pinched governments across Europe plan to nudge those levels up in 2003, hoping to boost the staggering €47.7 billion in tobacco taxes E.U. members pocketed in 2001.
But rather than discouraging consumption, the new taxes may simply encourage massive smuggling of cigarettes throughout Europe. Roughly one-third of the 5.3 trillion cigarettes produced each year are sold on the black market world-wide — a thriving business that in 2001 deprived the E.U. of at least $10-12 billion in tax revenues. That scale of activity — and the money it sucks from tax coffers — led the E.U. to sue tobacco firm R.J. Reynolds in a U.S. court last October, claiming the company connived in smuggling and subsequent laundering of profits. R.J. Reynolds and other tobacco companies call the charges false, and the logic skewed. "Smuggling represents 20% to 25% of the market completely outside our control," says Michelle McKeown of British tobacco company Gallaher. Industry says the smuggling problem can be cured by lowering taxes. McKeown estimates that in Britain alone, a cut in taxes reducing the price of a £4.50 pack to £3.50 would suffice to curtail smuggling to the island.
Antismoking activists reply the problem isn't high taxes, but how those proceeds are used — often as financial drips for health-care systems whose treatment costs of tobacco-related illness are rising. Instead, argues Peschang, "we should be treating the problem where it begins — by enforcing laws and educating young people to avoid tobacco."
In the end, common sense and the passage of time may lead Europe to a middle ground of consensus. It begins with Europe's nonsmoking majority simply asking that its right to clean air be respected, while agreeing that smokers should have places — in some bars or certain rooms in restaurants — where they can go to smoke. "We would like to see smoking become an exceptional rather than normal behavior," says Dr. John Britton, professor of epidemiology at Nottingham University and a specialist in respiratory diseases. U.K. activists like Britton want to see Britain's successful workplace restrictions extended to pubs, cafés and restaurants — either self-imposed, or by law if need be. There will always be conflict, because many pubs are too small to quarantine smokers. However, ash, the U.K.'s leading antismoking group, is willing to accept the idea of bars providing separate rooms for smokers, or, in tiny pubs, banning smoking at the bar. But die-hard smokers are sure to fight that idea.
Back in Paris at the Smoking Dog, regular Ian Wilson wonders what it will take to clear the air. Neither flouted laws nor unspoken consensus on smoking has changed habits much during the Irishman's 17 years in the city. "Apologists say the law imposed limits on smokers and taught them the rest of us have rights too, but I don't see that at all," he says, waving a hand around the smoky café. "The answer might be a European rule that everyone would have to obey. But even there — I doubt it." While Paris may not be burning, the city — like the rest of Europe — is still smoking up a storm.
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