Smokers' money

While I was going through the Hindu's editorial , an interesting point caught me between the lines :

......While big strides have been made in combating cancer in recent years, the fight against the disease has been wanting in funds not only for research and treatment, but also for educational and awareness programmes. As cancers of the mouth, throat, oesophagus, and lungs have been linked to tobacco use, funding for such efforts is crucial to the future of containment and control.....

While I was musing on those lines, an idea struck on my pristine grey cells to solve this funding problem. The main culprit of these Cancers found to be tobacco. What if government levy heavy taxes (heavier than what is existing) on the tobacco products and use this tax money to fund the institutions like Cancer institute,Chennai. It may look contradictory to use the money out of the same product which causes disease to cure people. It is similar to what government is doing like encourage the products and issue warnings on them ! One can easily guess this heavy tax if collected will certainly be passed on to the consumers in the name of price hike. This will directly/indirectly discourages tobacco usage and helps to strike a balance between funding problem and health issues.

Anyone would have noticed the policy of the government is like give necessary permissions to tobacco industries to produce products (tobacco products) and in turn help itself to fill its kajana , issue warning messages on the same products,ban the usage of the products in public places, ban smoking in movies saying that it encourages smoking among gullible and then spend huge amount of money in health sector, to fight against the disease which is caused by the same products, without producing any effective results. No one knows where the money -- hundreds of crores of rupees the government gets from tobacco industry every year -- is being used.

The kind of research going around Cancer related issues in the country needs encouragement from the government in all aspects. Not only monetary requirements it should quench but framing the policies to find the right balance between economic and social walks of life.

I have expressed my views as a common mortal and that will anyway demand not me to be an economist of yesteryear !