If cigarettes were withdrawn from public sale, I'd probably be more concerned about how the government would react in order to compensate itself for the loss of tax revenue.
Could be seen as a long term investment. Couple of economics students had gone over the numbers and there was a huge loss in health care from diseases directly linked to smoking alone, like COPD, lung, tongue, larynx, esophagus, lip, cancers. Not counting all the conditions where smoking is a huge contributing factor, various other cancers, heart disease, atherosclerosis and so on. Plus there are expenses in cleaning all the mess up, fire damage (when someone falls asleep with a lit cigarette), the cost separate smoker's areas, all those stickers and so on that weren't included in there.
Where I live excise duty is 34% for each pack. So they cost like 5 EUR, means each time someone purchases it, 1.7 EUR go into tax.
Let's say someone smokes 1 pack a day, for 20 years. Makes 7.200 packs=12.240 EUR in tax. Couple months lung cancer treatment, say surgery, radiation plus the additional treatments for survivors (9 out of 10 lung cancer patients die, it goes to stage IV in a blink of an eye) - starting at 50'000 EUR and upwards per person. All paid from public health care budget. Ok, is not given that everyone gets cancer from smoking, but every smoker who is half-way serious about his/hers habit does get COPD and that costs something as well. And there are a lot of smokers, 20-35% of population and they all *are* going to have more health issues than a +/- healthy non-smoker.
Sorry, but I don't think government makes any money by allowing cigarettes, as I see it (could be wrong, maybe someone has better numbers?), they lose huge sums instead. Smokers don't smoke enough to support their habit's consequences.
Anyhow, back to YSL. I still think it's incredibly ugly for a luxury brand to put their name on this kind of product. So 20th century, seriously. Outdated. Coughing up bloody lung pieces is not very glamorous either.
Silver lining - they cost more = more tax.
(but given that they aim for China and Russia... unlikely there will be much income from tax, all the black market activity there
) In any case - every smoker should get YSL instead of the cheap malboros!
