Cigarette laws and pharmaceutical conspiracy

I'll just leave this here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/health....html?_r=1

Good point there. However, the study doesn't tell us whether the country as a whole will gain on it or not.

Let's make one assumption here: People who smoke need smoke breaks during their work in order to function properly. If that is true, then it would be natural to think that the closer to a smoke break you are, the more unfocused you would be due to lack of nicotine.

Maybe non-smokers will be more focused on their work and save their company a lot of money.

Mind you, it may tick the other way - smokers might be better at work because they take more frequent breaks, or they may know other people better because they talk to people while smoking, etc. - but this is not information that this study take into account. It would be interesting if there's some sort of study that takes all of those effects of smoking into the calculations.