[Lumpold]

I actually did some maths last night to further my argument with anti-smokers.
This just covers tax raised by cigarette smokers.

Approx 1/5 of the UK population smokes.
With 62million people, and allowing for children, this makes me put the number of smokers at around 8million people.
Tax on a packet of cigarettes in the EU should be at least 66%.
At an average of £5 a packet, this puts the tax income at around £3.50 a pack.
If we nicely say that British smokers, each, smoke a pack every other day.
This makes a single contribution to the tax coffers of £640, or just under, for each smoker in the UK, with a total of £5,110,000,000, with around £3,000,000,000 or so going to the NHS for treatment of smoking related illness.
Said treatment, by their own accounts, cost the NHS approx. £70,000,000
That makes an overpayment of more than £2bn.
The NHS is apparently losing money on a daily basis.
Imagine how poor the medical service for non-smokers would be if the health tax on tobacco was reduced to an accurate level.