Smoking harmful to health

Tobacco currently kills more than 7 million people each year, making it one of the world’s most significant threats to public health, according to the World Health Organization. But the best intervention, according to a study published Wednesday in the BMJ, may be rooted in economics.

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Doubling cigarette taxes in 13 middle-income countries across the globe could save almost 450 million years of life and $157 billion in averted medical costs — all by prompting smokers to lay off the habit, and reaping the public health gains that follow, the study says.
To start, the researchers used existing price elasticity data to estimate how raising cigarette taxes could influence the habits of the 490 million male smokers living in the 13 countries included in the study, such as China, India, Mexico, and Brazil. They determined that a 50% price increase would correspond to a 20% downturn in smoking, encouraging millions of men to quit. Those in the lowest economic brackets would be especially likely to quit in the face of price increases, the data says.