State Collects €9 Billion from Tobacco It Claims to Combat

State Collects €9 Billion While Banning Smoking: The Tobacco Paradox

A cartoon hung in an engineer's office: a cemetery divided into two sections, one for smokers and one for non-smokers. The man smoked without complexes, using the joke against the anti-smoking campaigns he himself had promoted at a multinational. He died of lung cancer at 58. On the other hand, there's the grandfather who rolled his own cigarettes without a filter and passed away at 98 with a cigarette in hand. Between these two extremes, a recurring discussion brews: is tobacco as lethal as the WHO and health authorities claim, or is there an official narrative inflated by taxes?

Why Does the Body Crave Nicotine, Not Broccoli?

The most repeated argument is both biological and deceptive. Some argue that the human body is “very wise” and that if it craves tobacco, alcohol, or sens, it's because it's beneficial. The objection is quick: someone who has never smoked doesn't crave a cigarette, just as someone who never drinks doesn't crave a glass of wine. Addiction isn't a natural need; it's built through repetition. Young people don't like tobacco when they start; it's habit that turns poison into routine, and routine into dependence. No one disputes the mechanism. They dispute the consequences.

The Poison Isn't the Leaf, But What's Added

Here, the ground splits. One side argues that the problem isn't tobacco itself, but industrial additives: those who smoke branded cigarettes can't handle three in a row, while loose-leaf or tobacco seems different. Hence the trend of rolling your own and Virginia blonde tobacco, costing about €6 per 100 grams. From a clinical standpoint, the nuance matters little—combustion and nicotine are still present—but it fuels the underlying suspicion: the declared enemy, the plant, is not the same as the product sold at the tobacconist.

Banning and Collecting: The State's Double Standard

Smoking is bad, institutions say, until the state pockets €9 billion, and then the crusade becomes more lukewarm. It's the contradiction some point out with a smirk: they want us old and healthy, but they tax vice like a gold mine. The conspiracy theory—a plan to decimate the population while simultaneously banning tobacco—is unsupported by any evidence. The legitimate question about the dual role of administrations that legislate and collect, however, remains without a comfortable answer. Another cited criticism points to the paperwork: questionnaires at the dentist asking how many cigarettes a day and for which ministry the information is collected.

The Disconcerting Data

Studies cited in this area suggest that some heavy smokers who avoid cancer do so due to a mutation-suppressing ability, not luck. And the epidemiological evidence is stubborn: lung cancer deaths in women now surpass those from breast cancer, a consequence of increased female consumption between the 1950s and 1980s. In contrast, alcohol causes 40,000 deaths annually in Spain from direct causes. Neither figure is up for debate. The rest—the grandmother's cigarette at 98, the non-smoking neighbor who died of pneumonia—is anecdote, not argument.