Smoking and World Economy

Smoking costs the world 1% to 2% of its gross domestic product each year and could kill about one billion people this century, authors of the fourth edition of the Tobacco Atlas said at the book's launch in Singapore. The economic losses include direct and indirect costs such as healthcare spending for treating smoking-related illnesses and the value of lost productivity, say the authors of the book, which is published by the American Cancer Society and World Lung Foundation. The cost of smoking could be even greater, as co-author Hana Ross said it was difficult to measure intangible costs like the suffering of family members or pain felt by patients. "During the 20th century, tobacco killed 100 million people. The estimate is that in the 21st century, tobacco will kill one billion people," lead author Michael Eriksen said at the launch of the book at a global health conference in Singapore. Beijing raised tobacco taxes The world's population has grown by more than four times in the last century, passing the seven billion mark last year. Eriksen said there are about one billion tobacco users around the world and 600,000 non-smokers die each year because of exposure to second-hand smoke - 75% of them women and children. China is by far the world's largest consumer of cigarettes and saw costs due to smoking more than quadruple to R220 billion between 2000 and 2008, the authors said in the book.