In Northern Europe,one of every 10 men will die before age 70 and 40% of these deaths will be from tobacco. In contrast, in Western Europe of 10 men aged 35, 3 will die before age 70, and only a third of these deaths will be from tobacco.

Smoking is not often seen as a direct and fatal threat to health due to the long delay between cause and fatal effect. For example, the risk of lung cancer - the main cause of death from tobacco - is higher among those who started before 20 than among those who started later on.

The Surgeon General has estimated that since 1985 tobacco caused around 20% of all US deaths. Smoking is now the number 2 killer of all people in the USA.

Still in 2008, cigarettes and tobacco are big business in the developing economies of the new EU countries as Western and more enlightened governments realise the true and unpalatable cost of smoking and create adverse environments for the tobacco trade. However, the tobacco products manufacturer Philip Morris were keen to point out to the Czech government recently in a report to justify the relaxation of smoking restrictions there, smoking is economically beneficial to a country's finances.

Revenues from tobacco tax make it clear that smoking is good for government finances and it is not surprising that the relatively poorer countries of the European Union are not falling over themselves to tighten up the tobacco trade.

Smoking is extremely good economics for governments is borne out by its reliability to dramatically reduce life expectancy – so as to enable a natural culling of the elderly and a great saving on health care for them as well as retirement housing cost. This could well balance out the cost of medical care for smoking-related illnesses for the younger population.

However, there is even better news for governments, who in addition to wanting to keep old people off their books, are keen to reverse populations growth trends. This news is provided in the form of the report of the British Medical Association (BMA) in February 2008 which confirms that both passive and active smoking have a serious impact on men getting their pricks stiff.

Smoking compromises the ability to have a family and parents who smoke inflict great harm in respect of the health of their born and foetal-stage children.