Cost of smoking anyone?

Chris Auld writes on the whole cost of smoking versus cost of long term health paradigm.
Please visit his site and read the whole thing. The comments are good too, with interesting information
It's an interesting read.Here's a taster...................


If we do want to control these externalities, we should enact policies which encourage behaviors which reduce demand on the health care system and discourage behaviors which increase demand, all else equal. So suppose we’ve already decided that we want to subsidize healthy behaviors because we value health. If healthy behaviors wind up increasing lifecycle health care costs, we should either subsidize less than we otherwise would, or perhaps even tax, healthy behaviors. Healthy behaviors in this scenario benefit the person exhibiting the behavior but impose costs on everyone else, and this logic demands that we discourage healthy behavior relative to whatever policies we would otherwise have enacted. 


Hat tip to http://offsettingbehaviour.blogspot.com/