Blame Drinkers, Not Smokers

In an effort to reduce the amount of people smoking, the Government are offering free nicotine patches to smokers at a cost of £250M.
Obviously this is a good thing as smoking is not a healthy habit and i have to grudgingly give Dave C some credit for this initiative although i doubt i will be taking them up on their offer. I try to give up annually and have worn patches and found that they didn't work for me but i do know people who have given up whilst wearing them.
What i would like to do is dispel the often repeated misinformation that smokers drain costs on the NHS for treating smoking related illnesses because according to the Centre for Health Economics, the cost to the NHS for treating smokers is between £1.4bn and £1.7bn.
Granted that is expensive but tax from cigarettes raises £9bn annually for the Government so that argument is a non-starter because the NHS bill is safely covered 6 times over by smokers.
If you want to point fingers for self inflicted illness, Alcohol Concern state that alcohol misuse costs the NHS up to £3bn a year and is implicated in 33,000 deaths every year and one in six people attending accident and emergency units has alcohol-associated injuries.
The Wine and Spirit Trade Association (WSTA) claims that tax receipts from alcohol in 2008-09 raised £730m which means that it is drinkers and not smokers who should be accused of draining the NHS.
Maybe the Government should be aiming its schemes at drinkers, also not a healthy habit and much more costly in terms of treating and the resulting social consequences.