Citibank predicts that smoking will cease

Citibank predicts that smoking in the UK will expire by 2050 in the UK. It produces a table with data based on national smoking rates across several countries:

	% of the population that smokes	Citi's earliest prediction for end of smoking
Australia	17	2030
Belgium	20	2051
Canada	18	2040
Finland	21	2093
France	25	2118
Germany	23	2280
Greece	40	2231
Iceland	16	2033
Italy	23	2091
Japan	24	2054
Netherlands	28	2048
New Zealand	18	2058
Norway	21	2042
Spain	26	2056
Sweden	15	2028
United Kingdom	21	2040
United States	21	2046

I find it interesting that two countries that have announced that they will eradicate smoking in the medium term, Finland and New Zealand, according to this table, won't actually achieve it until relatively late: New Zealand in 2058, and Finland in 2193. Netherlands (where there has been a huge backlash to the recent smoking restrictions) kicks the habit in 2048, but France carries on till 2118, 70 years later, and the Greeks for more than a century after that.

The predictions are based on fifty years' decline in smoking rates, and reports stress that 'if this continues', smoking will die out by the dates indicated.

If this causes any jitters in the stock market I doubt they will last. Ireland's smoking rate appears to have increased again after a short-term decline following their ban in 2004, and Scotland is failing to meet targets.

NZ: Tarania Turia fails to count the cost of smoking

New Zealand, we are told, is heading for total prohibition. The NZ press is full of stories about the Government's hopes for a tobacco-free New Zealand, with short term price increases a first step. Fortunately reactions from  tobacco retailers are being reported too: rapid increases in price will not suppress demand, but fuel crime rates. People will get tobacco if they want it. A rise first implemented in April will see the price of 25 cigarettes increase by 30 per cent by 2014.

Health minister Tarania Turia has cast doubt on the figures for smoking-related costs to the health services (scroll down for costs of tobacco). in a letter reproduced here. Her letter admits that the $1.bn dollar figure provided by the Ministry of Health 'has never been portrayed as a measure of the money that might be saved if compared to a world where smoking had been eradicated'.

One might asks what on earth it has been flagged up to prove, if not how much money not smoking will save.

People are going to die anyway. They might die later, they might require more care of different kinds. Or some people might need something to replace tobacco and resort to something more dangerous, whether illegal drugs or a comfort that is quite legal like cream cakes or booze in copious amounts.

In the end they don't know, as Mrs Turia is right to point out, how much money would be saved if smoking were eradicated, or even if any money would be saved at all.

H/tip Dick Puddlecote