Smoking costs global economy $1t a year

Geneva

SMOKING costs the global economy more than US$1 trillion a year, and will kill one third more people by 2030 than it does now, according to a study by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the US National Cancer Institute published on Tuesday.

That cost far outweighs global revenues from tobacco taxes, which the WHO estimated at about US$269 billion in 2013-2014. "The number of tobacco-related deaths is projected to increase from about six million deaths annually to about eight million annually by 2030, with more than 80 per cent of these occurring in LMICs (low…