dodgy statistics from ash scotland

The BBC has news that ASH Scotland has guesstimated the costs that smoking puts on the Scottish economy. It's an amusing report because it contradicts itself in its convoluted effort to brand smoking as evil.

Ms Duffy said the cost of smoking was greater than the money received from tobacco duties, stating: "The Scottish government estimates it receives £940m in tobacco-specific duty, leaving a deficit of at least £129m.

Just as with alcohol duty and fuel duty VAT is demanded on tobacco duty. To calculate the duty plus VAT at the current rate of 17.5% we multiply by 1.175 so £940m x 1.175 = £1104.5m or in plain English smoking has a minuscule impact on productivity as the estimated costs and the actual revenue are almost identical. It may even have a positive impact.

So how is this £1.1bn cost to the Scottish economy figure arrived at? "smoking breaks, absenteeism among smokers and the lost output due to early deaths totalled more than £692m" So non-smokers don't have breaks, aren't absent and never die young from non-smoking related illness? I wonder if that figure includes the savings made in later life care and pension payments that would inevitably have to be made to a longer living population?

Looking for more information I headed over to the ASH Scotland website and after failing spectacularly to discover more coverage of this story I did discover a page dedicated to Workplace and Productivity which has a link to a study published in the BMJ on the Costs of employee smoking in the workplace in Scotland. A telephone survey of 200 businesses, of which 167 responded, which was carried out in 1996 almost 10 years before the Scottish smoking ban was introduced seems to be the source of this information. Only companies employing 50 or more people were surveyed. Small business which employs 88.6% of people in the UK [ONS] wasn't ever asked.

The study does answer my earlier question as to whether future health care costs have been included

It has been postulated that health care cost savings may not be realised if smoking rates fall, since smokers tend to have a lower life expectancy and therefore consume fewer health care resources in later life. Research findings across countries have differed, although when future health care costs are discounted (future costs given progressively a lower weight), smokers' life time health care expenditures have generally outweighed non-smokers.

[translation] "we didn't like the results so we fucked about with the statistics to give us results that suited our purpose" and also the accuracy of the figures

It is clear from this study that there is a limited research base from which to make precise estimates.

[translation] "we made it all up" but then that doesn't matter when you have specific targets does it? The end justifies the means when you are waging a war against smoking.