Encouraging smoking

Approximately three million people world wide die each year from smoking related illnesses. If current trends continue this figure is expected to rise to ten million per year by 2020. Of those, about half will die in middle age, losing 20 to 25 years of their life expectancy. The 1994 report, "Mortality from Smoking in Developed Countries, 1950-2000," projects over the 50 year period, 50 million men and 10 million women, have or will die from smoking related illnesses. Over the same period, the 1.2 billion smokers alive at present in developing countries, about 200 million will be killed by tobacco. About half a billion of the 5.5 billion people now alive will eventually be killed by tobacco.

In a 2000 report to the government of the Czech Republic the tobacco company Philip Morris, which makes 80 percent of the cigarettes sold in the country, estimated that the net economic benefit of smoking there was about 5.82 billion koruna (US $147.1 million) in 1999. This is because it causes people to die prematurely, thereby saving pension and health care costs.

The monetary estimate of benefits was based on the fact that the average smoker dies 4.3 years to 5.23 years earlier than a non-smoker and is therefore less of an economic drain. The report put the company's argument starkly: "Our principal finding is that the negative financial effects of smoking - such as increased health care costs - are more than offset by positive effects such as excise tax and value-added taxes collected on tobacco products."