The figures are from a presentation I am making to the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute this April. I previously used these figures in an invited presentation to the American Heart Association this past year as well as in New Zealand and Australia and other medical societies in the USA.
There are so many billions of dollars being made by Lipitor, Crestor, etc., the data supporting changes in smoking habits being responsible for the drop in heart procedures and cancer is not popular. The data speaks for itself. Just Google changes in smoking habits in the USA and you will get several hundred thousand hits in a fraction of a second. It is hardly a secret.
If you pay $10000/year for health insurance for 30 years, you paid $300,000 in premiums, a couple of hundred thousand less than the cost of your medical care. Who do you think picks up the slack, Jesus? It is the non-smoker and taxpayer.
Lies, damn lies, and statistics.
Figures/data never, "speak for themselves".
As for smokers using more medical money than people who don't smoke, I believe there was a study done by a government in Europe that showed smokers, as a whole, put more money into health care than they took out.
You present credentials that are unverifiable and make assertions presented as fact. For every crappy "study" you can present, there's a countervailing one.
The smoker and taxpayer pays more than his or her fair share for what's been become the modern form of indulgences paid to the new secular religion of Government.
Freedom is messy; it scares you.
Next on your list is "the obesity epidemic", right?
Who do you think picks up the slack, Jesus?
It is the skinny people and the taxpayer.
If you use tobacco in any form (including 'smokeless tobacco), you pay more for auto, fire, homeowners, life, and health insurance. Of course, you run the risk of keeling over dead (as does everyone else) from that first coronary.
As 'tobacco users' also pay taxes and higher prices for the 'tobacco settlement' which was supposed to offset those state-borne health care costs (but went for golf courses and just about anything BUT health care costs), I'm not sure where you get off bitching that smokers don't pay their way.
Not to mention the idea that smokers die sooner which means they will collect less in Social Security, Medicare, etc. over the long haul.
But it's still a free country, at least until someone makes the connection between pissing and moaning and the 'public' cost of something.
“The figures are from a presentation I am making..”
In other words, you have a financial interest in lying. Gotcha.
No links...just half truths and innuendo, from an obvious government employee.