A Tobacco Canard?

According to a new prediction by health advocates, tobacco could kill a billion people this century. By those authorities' own admission, that's ten times more than all the tobacco fatalities of the twentieth century put together. Compared to that, the twenty-first century will supposedly produce a whole millennium's worth of smoking deaths — in just a hundred years. Amazing, huh?

Of course, something about that nice big round number — one billion — doesn't smell right. Wikipedia points out that

The tobacco industry in the United States has suffered greatly since the mid-1990's, when it was successfully sued by several U.S. states. ... Since the settlement is a heavy tax on the profits of the tobacco industry in the US, and further settlements being made only add to the financial burden of these companies, it is debatable if the industry has a money-producing long-term outlook.

So the tobacco industry, in the United States at least, finds itself in dire circumstances, with a dwindling domestic market for its products. In addition to the crippling payouts required of tobacco companies, taxes on cigarettes have long been in an upward spiral; smoking bans are being imposed all over the map; and smoking is fast becoming as socially questionable as public urination.

Even allowing for different trends abroad, and a growing world population, there would seem to be little reason to suspect that the prevalence of smoking will greatly increase, much less by a factor of ten.

And wouldn't the predicted death toll be tempered considerably by big advances in cancer and heart disease treatments over the next 94 years? Does anyone doubt that the state of medicine in 2050 — let alone 2090 — will be vastly superior to today's? Yet the alarmists fail to take that into account, too.

You don't think they're cooking the books, do you? Playing fast and loose with the facts? Public-health advocates wouldn't do that, would they?

Comments

[Phil]

It's obvious how these guys and girls think: We know what's best, and the rest of the world is too stupid to do what we say, so let's make some shit up to scare them into it.

Pompous, arrogant, nannies.

[MJ]

fuck i hope the tobacco industry doesnt collapse or anything, i sure do love to smoke. i roll my own though, so as long as the ryo companies stay in business, well, i'm not happy, but im satisfied. i do buy a pack on the road fairly often.