Cigarettes and People
To CBC Sunday Magazine: Thank you sincerely for the piece you did with Joshua Knelman about Big Tobacco and its cozy relationship with government. I plan to listen to it again to see if I missed anything. A few points to file away for the next time you run a tobacco story: The industry had a deep connection to the Liberal Party decades ago. Tobacco farming was really profitable back in the 1970s. Our housemate Sylvie once worked on a tobacco farm where she had the best wages and working conditions of any of her jobs. Years and years ago I heard a health economist talking about tobacco. His take was that tobacco-related medical costs were misleading: heavy tobacco users typically died 20 years earlier and lung cancer moved fast and was inevitably fatal. When you look at the medical costs that people total up in that extra 20 years, every tobacco death is a net saving, and a significant one. Not sure what story today's numbers would tell, if you could get them. Pension...