Either Southern Europe is in for one hell-of-a gigantic health bill or Australians have been taken for a ride... being mislead on the risks of smoking tobacco... it has to be one of the other. Having wandered around the plazas of Italy and Spain, the incidence of smokers amongst middle aged citizens looks to be about 50%... no scientific measurement... just a rough guess. Ladies over the age of 60 years don't seem to smoke... the young kids seem to light up at the school gate.
The anti-smoking messages are hard to find... nothing much on TV... or in the news papers. The packets seem to carry a small text that warns that smoking is a health hazard... nothing pictorial... just small text. The cost of a packet of 20 cigarettes is €3-€4... even the beggars can afford their smoking habits. Vending machines can be found on most street corners.
As you know Australia offers a completely different smoking environment. People have become so conditioned by anti-smoking messages that they walk away from people when they light up a cigarette... smokers feel ostracised... made to stand out on the street to support their habit... and pay through the nose ($17 per packet) for the privilege. Retailers have to keep supplies away from public view.
I was interested to see comparative rates of smoking/lung cancer between Australia and southern European countries... so I searched the internet. The most recent reliable data is from 2008 (5 years old)... it seems to take ages to collect world-wide figures... Australian smoking rates have reduced significantly since then... I suspect rates in southern Europe have not.
In 2008, Australia had rates of lung cancer for men of 19 per 100,000... and deaths at a rate of 12 per 100,000. The equivalent rates for Spain were about 50 (lung cancer cases) and 42 (lung cancer deaths) per 100,000 of the population....much, much higher than the corresponding rates for Australia. You can see the annual changes in these rates in the graph shown below.
You'd reckon the governments would be doing forward financial projections of the costs to treat citizens with their current smoking habit... it is going to cost a fortune to treat future cases. Why governments are not taxing the product... limiting its visibility and providing more graphic warnings is hard to understand.
Health costs within the European Union are already staggering. I couldn't find an annual cost for lung cancer treatments... but the costs for all cancers combined in 2009 is calculated to be €129 billion... a huge cost that includes the cost of sick leave... lost opportunity costs from future work... and costs incurred by families in providing care. At a guess, the share contributed by lung cancer could be in the range of 25% to33%.
In a wide ranging paper published in Lancet Oncology, the team from the University of Oxford and King's College London provided other estimates on costs associated with cardiovascular diseases, including high blood pressure and stroke (€169 billion a year)... and dementia (€189 billion a year)... in just 15 countries in Western Europe.
Those of you familiar with the role carbohydrates and gluten play in both cardiovascular and dementia diseases... would be alarmed to see the number of patisseries crowding the plazas of southern Europe... and the row upon row of wheat based products and sugar based products occupying the supermarket shelves.
In Australia, we've made a great start in having governments prepared to act against smoking risks. Now we citizens have the job of persuading them to act on the bigger risks posed by over consumption of carbohydrates (wheat products) and sugars in causing epidemics... of both cardiovascular and dementia diseases.
(Here endeth the first lesson.)
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