Cigarettes Tax Hike, Quebec Tobacco Control

Taxpayers behaving badly will have to pay up. The cost of smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol is rising, a measure that will bring in $536 million in new revenue over the next three years to help Quebec balance its books. Taxes on alcohol are going up by about 25 per cent, while those on cigarettes are rising by 18 per cent, Finance Minister Nicolas Marceau announced. A pack of cigarettes will cost 50 cents more; a case of 24 beers will cost 82 cents more; a 750-ml bottle of wine will cost 17 cents more; and a 1.14-litre bottle of spirits will cost 26 cents more.

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.