Smoking costs $1.4 tn in health care, labour loss, study finds

PanARMENIAN.Net - Smoking cost the world economy more than $1.4 trillion (1.3 trillion euros) in 2012, and sucked up a twentieth of health care spending, a study said Tuesday, January 31, according to AFP.

The killer habit consumed the equivalent of nearly two percent of global economic output or GDP, according to experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the American Cancer Society, with almost 40 percent of the burden falling on developing countries.

These included a $422 billion price tag for treatment and hospitalisation, as well as indirect costs from labour lost to illness and death.

"Smoking imposes a heavy economic burden throughout the world, particularly in Europe and North America, where the tobacco epidemic is most advanced," said the study published in the journal Tobacco Control.

"These findings highlight the urgent need for countries to implement stronger tobacco control measures to address these costs."

The authors say the study is the first ever to include low- and middle-income countries in a more accurate estimate of the tobacco epidemic's total, global cost.

Most previous work has focused on rich nations.

The team used data from 152 countries representing 97 percent of the world's smokers in Africa, the Americas, the Eastern Mediterranean, Europe, Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific.

They included UN and World Bank data on illness and death attributable to smoking, national employment rates and national GDP.