Sale of Japan Tobacco stake worth Y747 bil

Tobacco stinks.

Bet plenty of non-Japanese tobacco companies would love tom own JT. Still one of the most smoker friendly countries in the world.

The health cost from the Ministry of Finance's stake in JT is several tens of thousands of lives and a hundred trillion yen in increased healthcare costs. They shouldn't be selling their stake, they should be using their stake to drive them out of tobacco production.

Basroil, i think you will find the economic benefits from tax outweigh the economic costs of treating smoking -related illness. Yes, snmoking can accelerate death, but we all die eventually so nthere are no more deaths actually CAUSED BY smoking than would otherwise occur.

we all die eventually so nthere are no more deaths actually CAUSED BY smoking

Wow...that's either deeply philosophical or very cretinous. With that reasoning you could argue that nothing causes death.....drugs, drunken driving, stab wounds, cancer, drinking lighter fluid, poking an ice-pick in one ear and out the other....none of them actually cause death, they just 'accelerate' it. Smoking 'accelerates' death slowly, dirtily, painfully and in a manner that is extremely unpleasant for the smoker and his family who are forced to watch the steady deterioration.

yes actually has been shown that when you factor into account increased healthcare cost that a smoker puts on the health system from tobacco, smokers actually are a less expensive to the tax payer than a non smoker mainly because smokers die earlier while non smokers live longer with added costs of age related sickness. But then morally this is wrong because the gov can argue, see smokers die quicker cost less the the system so lets keep them smoking!?

kill them off quicker through smoking = less age related burden on the health system.

when you factor into account increased healthcare cost that a smoker puts on the health system from tobacco, smokers actually are a less expensive to the tax payer than a non smoker mainly because smokers die earlier while non smokers live longer with added costs of age related sickness

But the non-smoker is active and working and paying taxes until retirement, while the smoker is taking time off due to poor health, or even retiring early and thus paying less in income taxes. Even if ¥400 from every packet went as tax revenue, a 20-a-day smoker would be paying less than ¥150,000 a year - not enough to compensate for the lost income tax, local tax and health insurance costs.

Even if ¥400 from every packet went as tax revenue, a 20-a-day smoker would be paying less than ¥150,000 a year - not enough to compensate for the lost income tax, local tax and health insurance costs.

There was a calculation a while back that smokers save the government money in terms of lower overall health insurance costs and reduced pension burden on the state (by dying early).

@ basroil - I sometimes disagree with you on the nuclear stuff but you've nailed it here. Barely no questions have been raised by the general public about their national government owning half of a massive cancer-causing enterprise. Almost a quarter of pack-a-day smokers will develop lung cancer. Fact. And watching a loved one die from it is tragic. Yet curiously no public marches on the streets of Tokyo about this. Rest in peace, granddad .