How can smoking affect the economy?
How can smoking affect the economy? More than its enormous toll of disease, suffering and death, tobacco use also burdens the global economy each year with an estimated US$ 1.4 trillion in health-care costs, lost productivity, fire damage, environmental harm from cigarette litter and destructive farming practices. How much does cigarettes contribute to the economy? The total economic cost of smoking (from health expenditures and productivity losses together) totalled US$1436 billion in 2012, equivalent in magnitude to 1.8% of the world's annual gross domestic product (GDP). What are the positives of smoking? A variety of mechanisms for potentially beneficial effects...