HealthDay News: Smoking Costs World $1.4 Trillion a Year in Disease, Lost Productivity
“Nearly six percent of the world’s health care spending is tied to smoking, a new study reports. That amounted to $1.4 trillion worldwide in 2012, with developing nations shouldering 40 percent of the burden, the researchers said. ‘Smoking imposes a heavy economic burden throughout the world, particularly in Europe and North America where the tobacco epidemic is most advanced,’ the study authors wrote…” (Dallas, 1/31).

International Business Times: Calls for controls on smoking as staggering medical costs revealed
“…According to experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the American Cancer Society, the total spent on medical costs associated with smoking are equivalent to two percent of the world’s GDP. … In this study, 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. … The WHO says introducing greater taxes is the most efficient way of dealing with smoking…” (Haddad, 1/31).