Wednesday, June 27, 2001

Report says smoking has benefits Report concludes that smoking is good for government finances By Kate Swoger Smoking may be bad for your health, but tobacco giant Philip Morris believes it's good for government coffers. The Czech arm of the multinational cigarette manufacturer has produced a study that concludes that smoking brought in about 5.8 billion Kc ($145 million) more than it cost the government in 1999. The controversial report, commissioned last year by Philip Morris from consultants Arthur D. Little, took about six months to prepare. It calculated the benefit to public finances by comparing the income brought in by taxes and savings from early deaths caused by smoking -- 21.46 billion Kc -- against the expense of treating smoking-related illnesses, absenteeism and lost income tax due to higher mortality -- 15.65 billion Kc. "These figures are part of the debate about smoking. Smoking is a very controversial thing," said Marek Hlavica of Philip Morris, which controls about 80 percent of the Czech cigarette market. "To bring something new into the discussion ... we initiated this study." But some medical experts question the report's conclusions, arguing that it greatly underestimates the health-care costs linked to smoking. Eva Kralikova, a smoking-prevention specialist at Charles University's First Medical Faculty, estimates that smoking-related health-care costs are about two or three times higher than the Arthur D. Little figure of 12.5 billion Kc. She also argues that the report's supposition that lives are shortened by an average of 4.3 years is too low. Czech smokers -- who make up almost 30 percent of the adult population -- actually shorten their lives by an average of eight to 10 years, she said. In March, Prime Minister Milos Zeman joked about the morbid financial benefits of smoking during a visit to India. He surprised his hosts by lighting up during a business seminar. "In the Czech Republic," he explained, "we have high consumer tax on tobacco products. So by buying cigarettes, I am basically increasing state revenues. It is also known that heavy smokers die younger, and then it is not necessary to pay them pensions." The Little report calculates that the state saved 1.19 billion Kc in 1999 on housing for the elderly, pension and social expenses and health-care costs due to smoking-induced deaths. Kralikova finds the consideration distasteful. "Following that logic, the best recommendation to government would be to kill all people on the day of their retirement," she said. Sicker lives But she also questions the financial benefits of these truncated lives. Kralikova points to a sweeping study produced by the World Bank last year that countered the popular belief that early deaths of smokers save money, concluding that shortened, often sicker, lives are more expensive than the longer lives of nonsmokers. Petr Sadilek, head of Prague's Medical Information Center, is wrapping up his own study of the cost of treating smoking-related illness. He believes smoking accounted for about 22 billion Kc in health-care expenditures in 1999, about 9 billion Kc more than the Little report concluded. "Philip Morris is starting to feel rising pressure to restrict or control smokers and smoking, which puts its profits directly in danger," Sadilek said. "That is why they are trying to stress the so-called positive aspects of smoking." For its part, Philip Morris, which produces Marlboro, L&M, Petra and Sparta cigarettes, says it realizes the report will be debated. The detailed documentation of the report's sources make it transparent and allow for such a critique, said Hlavica. "Probably some people find it quite difficult to accept that smoking can bring anything [positive]," he said, emphasizing that the report is not meant as a comment on the social or ethical aspects of smoking. "This is purely an economic study ... nothing less, nothing more." But Sadilek points out that of the country's 109,537 deaths in 1998, 24,897, or 22.7 percent, were caused by smoking. "There is a Jewish proverb: He who saves one life saves the entire world," he said. "Every life that we save is meaningful." -- Krystof Hilsky contributed to this report. Kate Swoger's e-mail address is kswoger@praguepost.cz