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Fewer Scots are choosing to smoke – but the costs of the habit remain high

Mar 15th, 2017
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National No Smoking Day passed last week with the now routine announcements from health chiefs welcoming the fact that fewer adults are choosing to light up.

http://www.scotsman.com/news/health/fewer-scots-are-choosing-to-smoke-but-the-costs-of-the-habit-remain-high-1-4392433

But the costs of the habit remain high and ensure that neither the Westminster or Holyrood governments will be declaring victory in their battle to stub it out.

Smoking remains the primary ­preventable cause of ill-health, disability and premature death in Scotland.

Each year tobacco use is associated with around 128,000 hospital admissions and more than 10,000 smoking-attributable deaths north of the border.

The average smoker in Scotland spends £1,500 each year on tobacco – and significantly more people in our poorest communities spend at this level compared to our most affluent.

Prevalence rates in Scotland have fallen from around 28 per cent in 2003 to just under 21 per cent in 2015. Among 13-year-olds and 15-year-olds, smoking rates have fallen steadily to their lowest ever levels – two per cent and seven per cent respectively.

“We’ve had ten years of decisive action which has undoubtedly improved our nation’s health – but there is still more to be done,” said public health minister Aileen Campbell. “As a result of our Take it Right Outside campaigns, reported exposure to second-hand smoke in the home among children under 16 has halved between 2013 and 2015 from over 11 per cent to six per cent.

“In December 2016 it became ­illegal to smoke in cars where children are present – and later this year, we will restrict the sale and availability of e-cigarettes to under-18s and introduce an offence for smoking near hospital buildings.

“We believe that by working together, and with the public’s ­support, we can achieve our goal of creating a tobacco-free generation by 2034.”

Data published this month by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed that 17.2 per cent of adults across the UK smoked in 2015 – the lowest level since records began in 1974.

Figures from 2015 also showed the highest level of so-called quitters in more than four decades.

Modeling the LongTerm Health and Cost Impacts of Reducing Smoking Prevalence Through Tobacco Taxation in Ukraine

Mar 12th, 2017
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Smoking’s hidden costs

Feb 5th, 2017
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Smoking Costs Nearly 2% of World’s GDP, Tobacco Control Measures Needed

Feb 2nd, 2017
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http://www.news18.com/news/business/smoking-costs-nearly-2-of-worlds-gdp-tobacco-control-measures-needed-1344166.html

Smoking consumes almost six per cent of the world’s total spend on healthcare and nearly two per cent of global GDP, a new research has found.

In 2012 the total cost amounted to $1,436 billion, with nearly 40 per cent of this sum borne by developing countries. The four BRIC countries — Brazil, Russia, India and China — accounted for 25 per cent of it, the findings showed.

“These findings highlight the urgent need for all countries to implement comprehensive tobacco control measures to address these economic costs,” the researchers said.

The detrimental impact of smoking on national health systems and economies has been widely studied since the 1960s, but most of these studies have focused exclusively on high income countries, the researchers noted.

So Mark Goodchild from World Health Organization (WHO) and colleagues wanted to include low and middle income countries to come up with more accurate estimates of the total global cost.

And so they included data from 152 countries representing 97 per cent of the world’s smokers.

They used the ‘cost of illness’ approach, first devised in 1960. This divides the economic impact of an illness into direct costs, such as hospital admissions and treatment, and indirect costs representing the value of productivity lost to death and disability in current and future years, for a given year.

The direct and indirect costs are then added up to provide the overall societal cost, usually expressed as a percentage of annual gross domestic product (GDP).

The researchers used data from sources such as the WHO and the World Bank to uncover information on the proportion of ill health and death attributable to smoking, national employment rates, and GDP for each of the 152 countries, to inform their calculations.

These showed that in 2012, diseases caused by smoking accounted for 12 per cent (2.1 million) of all deaths among working age adults aged 30-69, according to the study published in the journal Tobacco Control.

This figure included 1.4 million adults who would have been in the workforce.

The number of working years lost because of smoking related ill health added up to 26.8 million, 18 million of which were lost to death with the remainder lost to disability.

In terms of health spend attributable to smoking, this totalled $422 billion, equivalent to nearly six per cent of the global total.

The researchers pointed out that their calculations did not include the health and economic harms caused by second hand smoke or smokeless forms of tobacco, and that their estimates of lost productivity applied only to those who were economically active.

Bedford lost £14m last year due to smoking breaks

Feb 1st, 2017
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Figures released this week show smoking costs Bedford borough’s economy almost £34million a year.

But the biggest cost to the economy is not early deaths (£8.79million), smoking-related disease (£4.25million) or lost productivity because of sick days (£2.48million), says Action on Smoking and Health (ASH).

Instead the big cost is from people taking smoking breaks – reckoned to have cost Bedford firms nearly £14million last year because of lost productivity.

Councillor Louise Jackson, portfolio holder for public health, said: “Both councils and the NHS are experiencing severe funding pressures so these costs are not sustainable.

“Smoking remains the single largest cause of preventable death and illness in Bedford Borough, and the council provides free advice and support to help smokers to stop.

“People who use the stop smoking service are up to four times more likely to quit and last year we helped more than 700 people to successfully stop.

“For advice and support call 0800 013 0553.”

Deborah Arnott, chief executive of ASH, said: “We know that most local authorities remain committed to reducing smoking but key services are under threat from public health funding cuts.”

http://www.bedfordtoday.co.uk/news/bedford-lost-14m-last-year-due-to-smoking-breaks-1-7801719

Campaign Art: What’s the real cost of smoking?

Feb 1st, 2017
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People, Spaces, Deliberation bloggers present exceptional campaign art from all over the world. These examples are meant to inspire.

http://blogs.worldbank.org/publicsphere/campaign-art-what-s-real-cost-smoking

The real cost of smoking is high, especially high on your health. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), tobacco kills around 6 million people each year, out of which 600,000 are the results of non-smokers being exposed to second-hand smoke. The cost of smoking is also high on the global economy, as smoking burdens global health systems, hinders economic development, and deprives families of financial resources that could have been spent on education, food, shelter, or other needs.

Tobacco use is the world’s leading underlying cause of preventable death. It contributes to a great number of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), which account for 63% of all deaths. Prevention of tobacco use can significantly decrease the number of preventable deaths worldwide, encourage economic development, reduce poverty, encourage healthy lifestyle choices and support Sustainable Development Goals.

In order to prevent and reduce youth tobacco use, in February 2014 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) put forward a national public education campaign titled “The Real Cost.” The following video is a part of this campaign:

It is no surprise that tobacco is made of extremely toxic materials. But did you know that “Tobacco smoke contains more than 7000 chemicals, of which at least 250 are known to be harmful and at least 69 are known to cause cancer?” Here are some of the chemicals contained in tobacco smoke:

campaign_art_-_1

What are the global actors doing about this issue?

Many of the international organizations, government agencies, civil society organizations, private sector, communities, and private citizens raising awareness about the negative effects of smoking, funding programs to decrease global tobacco use, and promoting smoke-free lifestyles. Many of them also agree that tobacco tax increases are the single most effective policy to reduce tobacco use. Tobacco tax increases reduce consumption and promote quitting, they are inexpensive to implement, and they are especially effective in reducing tobacco use by vulnerable populations. (Tobacco use is increasingly concentrated in populations with the lowest income and socioeconomic status, and explains a large proportion of socioeconomic disparities in health.)

In the fight against tobacco use, the World Bank Group (WBG) is making its mark. Fully aligned with the WBG’s twin goals of ending poverty by 2030, and boosting shared prosperity, global tobacco control has become a development priority for WBG. Since 1991 the WBG’s policy has been not to lend, invest in, or guarantee investments or loans for tobacco production, processing, or marketing. WBG’s Tobacco Control Program assists selected countries in fostering and implementing tobacco tax reforms to achieve public health goals by reducing tobacco affordability and consumption, and controlling illicit trade on tobacco.

Reducing Smoking Prevalence through Tobacco Taxation in Ukraine

Feb 1st, 2017
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Modeling the Long-Term Health and Cost Impacts of Reducing Smoking Prevalence through Tobacco Taxation in Ukraine

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Florida attorney general goes after 2 tobacco companies

Jan 19th, 2017
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CTA says:

Why has the insipid Hong Kong Govt not sued Big Tobacco for the massive costs of health care treatment caused by their tobacco consumer product which kills 2 in every 3 of its users ? http://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-015-0281-z

Yet again in Legco on 17th January 2016 the tobacco company representatives tried their bully-boy tactics, threat to sue all and sundry etc, the same tactics which have already failed miserably in high court and subsequent legal appeals overseas, regarding plain packaging and Health Graphic warnings, claimed loss of tobacco trademarks and intellectual property rights caused by Govts changing the packaging of their ‘Silent Salesman’ advertising carton packaging.

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Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi on Wednesday sued two tobacco companies that she says are failing to pay millions owed to the state as part of a landmark settlement.

http://staugustine.com/2017-01-19/florida-attorney-general-goes-after-2-tobacco-companies

Bondi’s office, which filed the lawsuit in Palm Beach County, asserts that the state is already owed US$45 million and could lose $30 million a year going forward.

Nearly two decades ago, several of the nation’s largest tobacco companies negotiated a multibillion-dollar settlement with Florida to compensate the state for treating sick smokers. The state is projected to receive nearly US$356 million this current budget year in settlement payments.

The lawsuit contends that after R.J. Reynolds sold the cigarette brands of Winston, Kool and Salem to ITG Brands, both companies refused to make payments related to those brands. ITG Brands, the U.S. subsidiary of Imperial Tobacco, acquired the brands when Reynolds and Lorillard merged in 2015.

“The sale of major, pre-existing tobacco brands to another company for billions of dollars does not cause the payment obligations to vanish like a puff of smoke,” said Bondi in a statement. “I look forward to the state obtaining prompt relief.”

Florida filed its lawsuit a day after British American Tobacco announced that it is taking over Reynolds American in a US$49 billion deal.

Neither Reynolds nor ITG Brands responded to phone calls requesting comment.

Pushed by then-Gov. Lawton Chiles, Florida was one of the first states in the U.S. to seek damages from tobacco companies. The state’s lawsuit sought reimbursement for Medicaid costs in the past and future and contended that tobacco companies had engaged in unlawful actions and misleading advertising.

Smoking kills, so stop protecting it

Jan 14th, 2017
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http://www.nst.com.my/news/2017/01/204184/smoking-kills-so-stop-protecting-it

JAMES Bond isn’t the only one with a licence to kill. The World Health Organisation reports that smoking costs the global economy RM4.5 trillion a year, and will take eight million lives annually by 2030.

For a species that has invented fire, travelled to space and split the atom, we are still paying an industry to kill us. Mankind is indeed strange.

Decades of research have shown that smoking can be fatal. So, we are often asked: if cigarettes cause such harm, why are they allowed to exist?

One challenge is the separation of the problem — the health industry sees tobacco as a health issue, while businesses and governments see it as an economic driver.

But the same WHO report also states that the cost of smoking far outweighs the revenue from tobacco taxes.

Treating smoking-related diseases drives up the cost of healthcare. In 2005, Malaysia’s Health Ministry spent 26 per cent of its budget to treat those diseases, which accounted for 0.74 per cent of its gross domestic product.

There are also the environment, productivity and human development — smoking pollutes our air and water, and smokers are 30 per cent more likely to miss work (for longer periods, too). In some families, money for cigarettes is taken from household essentials.

No other industry causes as much damage to its users and non-users alike — and remains legal.

Instead of protecting this industry, we urge the nation to support tobacco control efforts in Malaysia.

Tobacco control can work. A study published in the United States this month reports that efforts since 1964 had resulted in eight million fewer smoking deaths.

We should want the same for our fellow Malaysians.

MANDY THOO

National Cancer Society Malaysia

Smoking Rates May Decline With Higher Tobacco Taxes

Jan 11th, 2017
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If all countries raise excise taxes on tobacco products, smoking rates may decline by up to 9%.

http://www.thecardiologyadvisor.com/prevention/smoking-rates-drop-tobacco-high-taxes/article/631011/

Smoking kills about 6 million people a year, and costs the world more than $1 trillion a year in health care expenses and lost productivity, but billions of dollars and millions of lives could be saved through higher tobacco prices and taxes, according to a report from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the US National Cancer Institute.

“The economic impact of tobacco on countries, and the general public, is huge, as this new report shows,” Oleg Chestnov, MD, PhD, the WHO’s assistant director-general for noncommunicable diseases and mental health, said in an agency news release. “The tobacco industry produces and markets products that kill millions of people prematurely, rob households of finances that could have been used for food and education, and impose immense health care costs on families, communities, and countries.”

Annual tax revenues from cigarettes globally could increase by 47%, or $140 billion, if all countries raised excise taxes by about 80 cents per pack, according to the report.

The report authors predicted this would raise cigarette retail prices an average of 42%, leading to a 9% decline in smoking rates and up to 66 million fewer adult smokers.

Poorer countries suffer the greatest burden from tobacco use. There are 1.1 billion smokers aged 15 years or older worldwide, and 8 out of 10 of them are in low- and middle-income countries.

The research summarized in this report “confirms that evidence-based tobacco control interventions make sense from an economic as well as a public health standpoint,” report co-editor Frank Chaloupka, PhD, professor of economics at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said in the news release.

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