Every cigarette smoked costs taxpayer 6.5p think tank warns

By Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor 715AM GMT eighteen March 2010

Nearly one in 4 British adults still smokes notwithstanding tobacco being the majority usual means of genocide Photo BLOOMBERG NEWS

The taxation on cigarettes should be augmenting as the weight on the taxpayer is as well high, even receiving in to comment revenues from duty, a think tank said.

Policy Exchange called for a five per cent climb in subsequent week"s check - a climb of 23p for a pack of twenty - and serve rises over the subsequent five years to safeguard smoking became "revenue neutral".

Taxes contingency climb by �45bn a year to encounter Budget 2009 aim Call to revitalise Saturday spawn collect to save trashed Britain Taxpayers �8,000 Barnett Formula check for services in Scotland Pre-Budget inform Alistair Darling augmenting income taxation worse than a rubbish of time Three out of 4 British adults are as well fat

It would meant the cost of a pack would climb by �1.29 to reach �7.42 over the march of the subsequent Parliament.

The income could compensate for health measures such as a �10-a-week "reward" for profound women who give up smoking.

Research conducted by Policy Exchange found found that whilst taxation on tobacco lifted �10 billion a year for the Treasury, the annual cost of healthcare and alternative consequences of smoking totalled �13.74 billion.

That sum includes �2.7 billion of NHS care, �2.9 billion lost in capability during smoking breaks, the �342 million cost of cleaning up butts and �507 million outlayed putting out fires.

Lost capability due to the deaths of smokers and pacifist smoking victims costs �4.8 billion and �2.9 billion is lost in augmenting absenteeism, their inform - Cough Up - concluded.

A five per cent climb subsequent week would, permitting for a accompanying rebate in smoking rates, beget some-more than �400 million for HM Treasury - the think tank calculated.

Duty on hand-rolling tobacco should additionally be lifted to a turn "commensurate with cigarettes" to forestall people switching, it said, suggesting it was undertaxed at present.

The inform pronounced a suit of the income should be clinging to efforts to stop people smoking - with profound women the majority distinguished aim to forestall young kids "inheriting" their addiction.

As well as a dedicated use in maternity units, it suggested, mums-to-be elderly twenty or underneath should be offering a �10-per-week "financial incentive" to give up - costing �36 million annually.

Another �10 million a year should be outlayed on media campaigns to progress take-up of the NHS Stop Smoking Service - usually used by a little fragment of would-be quitters notwithstanding being rarely effective.

And all patients should be offering the Champix (Varenicline) pill, that is now usually prescribed to one in five smokers perplexing to give up of cases notwithstanding being the "most in effect and cost-effective treatment", the inform said.

Report writer Henry Featherstone, head of Policy Exchange"s health and amicable caring unit, pronounced "It is a renouned parable that smoking is a net writer to the economy - the investigate finds that each singular cigarette smoked costs the nation 6.5 pence.

"In sequence to change income and costs, tobacco avocation should be gradually augmenting until the full governmental cost of smoking is met by taxation.

"As a start, the subsequent Budget should enlarge tobacco avocation by five per cent - this will revoke tobacco expenditure by 2.5 per cent and yield an one some-more �400 million for the Treasury.

"A suit of this additional income should be put towards assisting people quit, and in sold reaching hard-to-reach groups similar to profound teenagers.

"Targeted movement similar to this would assistance revoke England"s flourishing health inequalities, whereby those on reduce incomes humour some-more ill health, that can mostly be attributed to smoking."