【普特聽(tīng)力文章】
People give all kinds of reasons for why they started smoking, but none of them are good — not even supposedly altruistic ones.
While some claim that you’re actually saving our overburdened healthcare system money in the long run by smoking because it reduces life expectancy, it’s nowhere near a watertight argument.
First of all, you’re certainly not doing your family and friends a favor by deliberately lowering your life expectancy. In fact, your family will have to absorb the losses incurred when you miss work due to smoking-related illnesses. Second, there is a lot of debate over the best way to measure the economic costs of smoking.
Every study is based on different assumptions, and uses different data and methods. For example, should you measure the cost of smoking by looking at the cost of treating major illnesses like lung cancer and heart disease, or should you also measure the cost of less serious illnesses? Should you take into account the fact that people who live longer also pay more taxes and insurance premiums? Should you look at the overall cost to the healthcare system, or at the cost per individual?
Anyway, regardless of how you calculate them, the economic costs of smoking are inconsequential when compared to smoking’s real price: the misery caused by the deaths of over 400,000 people each year and the illnesses of several million.
【參考譯文】
人們總是為開(kāi)始抽煙找各種理由，但是沒(méi)有一種是好的，沒(méi)有所謂的利他理由。
有這樣一種聲音，從長(zhǎng)遠(yuǎn)利益來(lái)說(shuō)你抽煙是在拯救我們不堪重負(fù)的醫(yī)療系統(tǒng)資金，減少預(yù)期壽命，但嚴(yán)密的論證我們尚未掌握。
首先，刻意降低你的預(yù)期壽命，并不是在幫你家人和朋友的忙。事實(shí)上，當(dāng)你患上了抽煙的相關(guān)性疾病，你的家人便不得不承受造成的損失。其二，通過(guò)的方式去衡量抽煙的經(jīng)濟(jì)成本還存在很多爭(zhēng)議。
各項(xiàng)研究都基于不同的假設(shè)，而且使用了不同的數(shù)據(jù)和方法。例如，通過(guò)觀察治療如肺癌，心臟病等重大疾病的成本，你估量到抽煙的成本了嗎?你同時(shí)估量到不嚴(yán)重疾病的成本了嗎?你考慮到活得更加長(zhǎng)久人同時(shí)需要付更多的稅費(fèi)和保險(xiǎn)的事實(shí)了嗎?你考慮過(guò)醫(yī)療系統(tǒng)的總成本嗎?或者是每個(gè)人的成本嗎?
總之，不管你怎樣計(jì)算，與抽煙實(shí)際代價(jià)相比，它的經(jīng)濟(jì)成本便微不足道了，抽煙釀成了每年40萬(wàn)人的死亡以及數(shù)百萬(wàn)人患病的悲劇。
