Smoking and Obesity – a Boon to Saving Health Care Costs?

In a refreshing breath of academic honesty, a study debunks the nanny state myth that smoking and obesity increase government health care costs.  So it may be time to dispense with this oft repeated myth.  A myth that has long been used as a major justification for governments’ intrusions into these health aspects.    

This should have been simple common sense, but unfortunately common sense just doesn’t work with bureaucracies hell bent on arbitrarily stamping out things they don’t like.  So a formal study was required.  The not-so-surprising findings and conclusions?  Smokers and the obese die earlier and thus have far less overall lifetime health care costs than the otherwise ”healthy.”  Moreover, smokers actually provide the added government “benefit” of paying extra taxes. 

Of course, as anyone who has ever watched “It’s a Wonderful Life” knows (“Zuzu’s Petals!”), when a person dies early (or as in the movie, ceases to exist) there are actually costs that are intangible, difficult to quantify, or impossible to know, so purely looking at lifetime health care costs in itself may not be a true measure of overall cost; but it is at least a start down the road of academic honesty.  An honesty that is sorely needed as governments seek to regulate more and more aspects of peoples’ private lives and behaviors.

Hash House Harrying and Krispy Kreme Challenging

I heard of a few amusing new “sports” this week: 

• The Krispy Kreme Challenge – a 4 mile jog while eating a dozen donuts – http://www.krispykremechallenge.com/ 
• Hash House Harriers – jogging, beer drinking, and a quiz rally – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_House_Harriers  and when you heard “beer” you just knew Pittsburgh would have a chapter

I figure such events are only the natural progression of all those supposedly well-meaning matrons forcing junk food on their kids at those youth sporting events.  I can remember at my kids’ soccer league games, I was always a bit peeved by the parents who were compelled to organize the ”halftime snack” of juice boxes and Little Debbies.  Especially since I figured that this was probably the only time half of those kids had gotten out of the house away from this junk all week; yet even here in the middle of the soccer pitch, junk food was thrust on them.

On the other hand to look at the positive side, if you figure folks are just going to eat donuts and drink beer anyway, they might as well get in some jogging (and puking).  But be careful, and I am not making this up, one of the few “rules” is “no puking on purpose.”

So move over bowling, darts, and pool, eating and drinking just found a new companion sport.  Krispy Kreme Pizza House Harrying Anyone?  Jog a 5K while eating a dozen donuts, a medium pizza, and drinking a 6-pack of beer. 

Smoking Bans and other “Feel Good” Legislation yet Government just can’t Quit the Smoking Habit

Legislative smoking bans and the general outright social disdain for smoking seems to have had some interesting consequences that I wonder if their proponents ever foresaw:

• A dramatic increase in the number of smoke shops (exempt from smoking bans) where people smoke far more dangerous things than cigarettes such as cigars and even hookahs
• An increase in the use of smokeless tobacco – even new kinds of smokeless tobacco are being developed and marketed, such as Snus, and are immensely popular (smokeless tobacco use is increasing something like 10% a year – well in excess of the increase of the redneck population)
• Smoking ends up being as rebellious and anti-establishment as it ever was

You see, the issue is simply this: for any “low-grade” vice you can think of, there is a certain percentage of the population who is going to engage in that vice – often regardless  of the consequences.  Legislative solutions to these classes of problems have consistently been shown not to work.

Governments’ half hearted attempts to limit drinking and smoking are particularly disingenuous and cynical when they use the tax revenues generated to support budget shortfalls and normal operating costs.  Remember that big umpty bazillion dollar State Tobacco Settlement that was supposed to go toward (1) funding government health care for smokers and (2) smoking cessation efforts?  It didn’t – it went into state coffers to be squandered on completely unrelated state budget items.

When it comes to complex social ills such as vices, you can be sure of only one thing: that simple, “feel good” solutions won’t work and will probably make the problem far worse.  Can they be solved?  Sure – we were able to get the Romans to stop feeding Christians to lions for entertainment, weren’t we?  But it takes a genuine commitment beyond the simple, superficial, “feel good” type. 

And above all you have to be honest and consistent in your message.  If you say something is evil and deadly, you then don’t take this “blood money” and use it to fund your state budgets.  Governments are the first ones who need to quit the smoking habit – perhaps then others will follow their example.