RE: ‘Only a ban will stop smokers’ (Letters, June 15), while the health issue regarding smoking can be seen as self-evident, the financial costs of the NHS treating smoking-related illnesses must surely be put in context by the tobacco taxation revenue drawn by the Government, and more pointedly ‘coughed up’ by the smokers themselves in purchasing their tobacco in the first place.

The recent research that stated medical bills to treat smokers' ailments came to more than £5billion per year did not include the fact that revenue from tobacco taxation is double that figure. So it could be said that smokers are in fact paying for non-smokers’ healthcare along with their own.

Incidentally, the figures produced by the Oxford University’s team involved with the research were estimated not calculated. The actual figure of revenue from tobacco for 2006/07 is stated as £8.1billion by HM Revenue & Customs and with the added VAT of £1.9billion (estimated by the Tobacco Manufacturers' Association) we end up with a total of £10 billion.

HMRC themselves forecast tobacco Excise Duty to be £8.2 billion for 2008/09 and 2009/10, so the punitive level of this particular tax is still of major significance to our Government, let alone the smokers and the NHS.

Another point worth considering is the £25billion costs that drinkers lay at the feet of the NHS for treating their associated illnesses, so do we need to propose a ban on all alchohol consumption?

I’m sure Councillor Salim Mulla would agree that education is the answer to a better lifestyle all round for us all, and that must take in such areas as, say, child and adult overweight problems. But any discussion on these matters must include all the available facts so we are able to draw valued conclusions.

J. Eric Nolan, Blackburn