Because it is.
From 2 years ago.
Implementing the smoking ban in England will cost taxpayers, restaurateurs and pub landlords at least £100 million more than the Government originally budgeted.
The Department of Health estimated that the bill for the ban, that comes into force in a month's time, would run to £1.6 billion.
While this takes into account paying for advertising, falling tobacco duty and hiring extra staff to police the ban, the Government has said it will be offset by the benefits to the NHS as smoking diseases fall.
I know we are well aware of it now, but this would tend to suggest that the government are a bunch of ideological, self-indulgent morons with no clue as to human nature, and with no capability to number crunch the experiences of other countries which have suffered comprehensive bans. For crying out loud, the one just over the Irish Sea had all the info they needed, and they speak English there (sort of), no excuse of a dodgy translator. Yet our elected fucksticks couldn't see what was right in front of them.
£100m over budget you say? Made up by savings to the NHS you say?
Wouldn't savings sort of require less people to be smoking post-ban?
The ban on smoking in public has failed to increase the number of people quitting, a report revealed yesterday.
The proportion of men who smoke has actually risen since the ban in July last year while there was no change at all among women.
The figures, coming after years of declining smoking rates, are a massive blow to Labour's public heath policy.
The best bit of this, is that the Labour spin machine would normally be cranked into action to explain why an increase in smokers actually translates into a reduction in costs to the NHS.
Unfortunately, their preferred method of pumping out bogus shite is via the route of state-paid charities. And one of them really fucked that exit strategy up the arse with a broken bottle last month.
When the government passed laws which enabled dropping a cigarette butt to be punishable by a higher-than-average fine 2 years ago, their press release to the Telegraph mentioned a highly-objectionable figure.
This is one of a series of measures being introduced by the Government that will stigmatise what is normal practice for 10 million smokers, and - it is hoped - slash the NHS's £1.7 billion bill to treat smoking-related diseases.
Only £1.7bn? Small beer compared with the £5bn it now costs us 2 years later. Step forward the British Heart Foundation.
Treating disease directly caused by smoking produces medical bills of more than £5bn a year in the UK.
Where are the savings, HMG? If there was even a single £1 coin saved due to the Health Act 2006, you'd be screaming it through every avenue your preferred method of propaganda, the BBC, have to offer, yet there is nothing. Total silence. Just a massive increase.
We see the £1.6bn you have spent on it. We see the increase in smoker prevalence, and with it, the increase in burdens on the NHS, according to your logic. We still haven't seen one single life saved, but we have seen the wholesale destruction of the hospitality industry as nearly 4,000 pubs have closed their doors forever since July 1st 2007.
And if you'd only looked over the Irish Sea, you would have seen that this would happen. Smoker rates were always going to go up (Hint: The Irish ban started on April 30th, 2004).
The number of smokers reportedly fell from 33 per cent in 1998 to 27 per cent in 2002, but jumped alarmingly to 29 per cent last year, according to a survey published by Ireland’s Department of Health.
In fact, you could have looked to the North, as the same happened there too (The Scottish disaster started in March 2006).
In 2004 the number of young smokers in Scotland had fallen to just 25% but by 2007 that figure was 31%.
David Gordon of NHS Health Scotland is co-lead of the Scottish Public Health Observatory.
He said: "Smoking rates have fluctuated without showing any sustained trend between 1999 and 2007.
This isn't a UK phenomenon, it is worldwide. It's a simple fact that smoker bans make more people smoke more fags.
There are no savings (how laughable that fantasy from the DoH seems now), merely losses. It could and should have been foreseen, but the £1.6bn was spent on it anyway.
There are now more smokers, more costs to the NHS, and a wilful destruction of the fabric of British pubs never seen before in the history of our country.
"Ah, but it was brought in to protect bar staff, Dick", I hear you say. I bow to you in that respect. It has been hugely successful in protecting a vaste swathe of bar staff from the right to earn money in a profit-making pub.
I'm sure they are blissfully happy that Labour and the Illiberal Dems thought of them so kindly ... while they now dutifully queue to sign on at the Job Centre.
Smoking ban: Epic fail.
