The article certainly draws conclusions that the research doesn't. [0]

It seems to be that the obese and smokers do cost a lot more on the healthcare system - however they also die earlier, and so the net cost ends up being less.

> Nevertheless, these findings suggest that although effective obesity prevention reduces the costs of obesity-related diseases, this reduction is offset by the increased costs of diseases unrelated to obesity that occur during the extra years of life gained by slimming down.

However, it doesn't seem like government funding into prevention or research were also tallied into the costs of the illnesses, which are not inconsiderable.

[0] http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jou...

He brings up some interesting points, but he closes his article writing, "Those who die young save health care systems money, not cost."

Yes... if everyone died, including the smokers, governments would effectively cut healthcare costs to 0. Thats not how public health systems work though.

I would not say debunked

Usually, there's a medically expensive period before death and the burden may even begin in the productive years. Smoking probably causes higher incidence and severity of common diseases like influenza, additionally resulting in loss of labour, income and associated taxes.

> I believe this has been debunked.

It might be true that it tobacco reduces the overall health care burden because it causes people to die earlier, but it's not relevant. Setting your car on fire might also have the side-effect of lowering the operating cost of that car.

This fact check gives estimates between 3 and 6 billion a year in direct health costs and possibly 14 billion in wider costs including e.g. missed work days due to illness and responding to more fires.

https://fullfact.org/economy/does-smoking-cost-much-it-makes...

> Smoking costs the NHS £2Bn/year while tobacco raises £12Bn/year in taxes,

If you ask the tobacco industry. They have a lousy track record, so you can understand people who don't believe them.

Also, note this is a dubious claim in the UK with a > 80% tax rate, it's even shakier in countries with a lower tax rate.

I think these estimates from the CDC are pretty conservative. In the US, EVERY YEAR:

"Smoking-related illness in the United States costs more than $300 billion each year. Nearly $170 billion for direct medical care for adults More than $156 billion in lost productivity, including $5.6 billion in lost productivity due to secondhand smoke exposure"

https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/econ...

OFF-TOPIC

A major way (the only way?) to curb tobacco usage is to simply increase taxes on tobacco usage, but politicians/bureaucracy prefers the short-term tobacco tax revenue.

Cool article about Chinese tobacco tax rev: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-12-12/the-chine...

Smoking tobacco kills taxpayers. Illnesses caused by smoking are expensive to treat.