Here is a fallacy with a familiar ring.

Everyone knows that smokers cost society more in health care costs, and that is what makes steep taxes on tobacco fair. As the saying goes, "It's not what we don't know that gets us in trouble. It's what we know for a fact that just ain't so."

Erica Werner of AP has this "Fact Check" article that tells the unpleasant truth.

Smoking takes years off your life and adds dollars to the cost of health care. Yet nonsmokers cost society money, too - by living longer.

It's an element of the debate over tobacco that some economists and officials find distasteful.

"We were actually quite surprised by the finding because we were pretty sure that smokers were getting cross-subsidized by everybody else," said [Willard] Manning [of U.Chi.]....  "But it was only when we put all the pieces together that we found it was pretty much a wash."

So why is this familiar and what is it doing in a crim law blog? This is the same fallacy we are seeing in the death penalty debate. People look at direct costs, such as a capital trial costing more than a non-capital trial, and ignore less obvious offsetting factors, such as the much larger number of trials saved when cases are plea-bargained to life sentences.

Our previous post on that subject is here.