- Philip Morris Company officials in the Czech Republic
have been distributing an economic analysis concluding that cigarette
consumption
isnít a drag on the countryís budget, in part because
smokersí
early deaths help offset medical expenses.
-
- The report, commissioned by the cigarette maker and
produced
by consulting firm Arthur D. Little International, totes up smoking's
"positive
effects on national finances, including revenue from excise and other taxes
on cigarettes and "health- care cost savings due to early
mortality."
-
- The premature demise of smokers saved the Czech
government
between 943 million koruna and 1.19 billion koruna (between $23.8 million
and $30.1 million or between 20.3 million euros and 25.7 million euros)
on health care, pensions and housing for the elderly in 1999, according
to the report.
-
- The report also calculates the costs of smoking, such
as the expense of caring for sick smokers and people made ill by
second-hand
smoke as well as income taxes lost when smokers die. Weighing the costs
and benefits, the report concludes that in 1999 the government had a net
gain of 5.82 billion koruna ($147.1 million) from smoking.
-
- Philip Morris said it received the Little report late
last year and handed it out recently after complaints from Czech officials
that the tobacco industry was saddling the country with huge health-care
expenses. "This is an economic-impact study, no more, no less,"
said Robert Kaplan, a spokesman for Philip Morris's international tobacco
unit in Rye Brook, N.Y. "We're not trying to suggest that there would
be a benefit to society from the diseases related to smoking."
-
- Philip Morris manufactures about 80% of the cigarettes
smoked in the Czech Republic. The New York company, which owns a 77.5%
stake in a formerly state-owned Czech tobacco enterprise, sells its
flagship
Marlboro smokes as well as local brands.
-
- Measuring the net costs of smoking to societies and
governments
long has been controversial and difficult. Studies measuring the lifetime
health-care costs of smokers, who die sooner but have higher annual medical
expenses, have reached conflicting conclusions. Some find that, over their
lives, smokers have similar costs to nonsmokers. Others have found that
smokers' health-care costs are higher.
-
- Gauging the real level of such costs is very difficult,
and hard-to-quantify expenses aren't captured in many estimates. Smokers,
for example, recover more slowly and are more likely to have complications
after surgery for unrelated problems, increasing the cost of caring for
them.
-
- Tobacco-control experts attacked the Czech report.
"Is
there any other company that would boast about making money for the public
treasury by killing its customers? I can't think of one," said Kenneth
Warner, an economist at the University of Michigan's school of public
health.
Dr. Warner said the study appeared to be seriously flawed because, among
other things, it fails to consider what the economic impact would be if
smokers stopped buying cigarettes and spent their money on other goods
instead.
-
- Eva Kralikova, a physician and epidemiologist at Charles
University in Prague, said the report also "very much
underestimated"
the costs of medical care for people suffering from smoking-related
diseases.
Dr. Kralikova said lung cancer and other illnesses caused by tobacco use
account for about 20% of all deaths in the Czech Republic, killing about
23,000 people a year. And she said the number of illnesses and deaths is
expected to mount, as is the expense of medical treatment, as smokers
age.
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