MONTREAL - A report commissioned by Imperial Tobacco says tobacco-related deaths are an economic advantage to Canadians because cigarettes kill people off before they become a burden to the health-Care system.
Previously, the tobacco giant always denied any link between cigarettes and death.
Anti-smoking groups rarely consider the reduction in health costs resulting from the premature death of certain smokers," said the report, written by economist Jean Pierre Vidal.
"A person who dies of lung cancer at age 70 will not be hospitalized later with another disease."
Vidal, co-author of a 1992 study on the same theme was commissioned by imperial after Leo-Paul Lauzon, a Universally of Quebec accounting professor, published a scathing report of the tobacco industry in June. Lauzon said tobacco companies rake in huge profits while controlling the market for a deadly product that costs Canadians $9.7 billion annually in health-care costs.
He cites a 1991 World Health Organization report for that figure.
Vidal, a non-smoker, concluded that Lauzon had no evidence that smoking had a negative impact on society. He also said that the $9.7 billion estimate of tobacco-related health-care costs was too high. Health and Welfare Canada has estimated that cost to be $2.9 billion, he said.
Vidal also contends that revenues lost by smokers because of premature death are not a cost for governments or taxpayers, because people who don't work simply are not paid.
In an interview, Vidal said he did consider the cost to taxpayers when families are forced on to welfare because their breadwinner has died from tobacco-related causes. But this cost is minor because most smokers die around retirement age, he said.
And there may even be another social saving, he added: dead smokers don't collect the pensions they have contributed to all their lives.
Vidal also confirmed that he had "taken it as a given" that tobacco causes cancer and other diseases.
Imperial spokesman Michael Descoteaux said his company would issue a statement today about Vidal's report.
The former medical director of the Montreal Heart Institute, Marcel Boulanger, said smokers' workplace productivity is six to 10 percent less than nonsmokers. And he said the cold calculations made by Vidal were horrifying.
"If as a tobacco manufacturer I say 'I'm killing people so they won't cost,' that's terrible.
"If you push that logic further, you can close the children's hospital to save money."
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