[Costs and benefits of smoking].
- Two recent societal cost-benefit analyses have documented the costs of smoking and the cost-effectiveness of preventing smoking.- Smoking costs the Netherlands society EUR 33 billion per year.- The majority of this is the monetary value of health loss; these are "soft" euros that cannot be re-spent.- There is not a great deal of difference between costs and benefits when expressed in "hard" euros, which means that there is no clear business case for anti-smoking policy.- The greatest benefit of discouraging smoking is improved health for the individual and increased productivity for the business sector; however, the benefits cannot be easily realised, because even in the most favourable scenario the number of smokers will decrease slowly.- Excise duties seem to offer the most promising avenue for combating smoking. The benefits of anti-smoking policy, therefore, consist mainly of tax revenues for the government.- Stringent policy is required to transform tax revenues into health gains.
RIVM, Bilthoven.
J J
JJ
Polder
P F
PF
van Gils
L
L
Kok
R
R
Talhout
T L
TL
Feenstra
D003132:Commerce; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D017048:Health Care Costs; D006801:Humans; D009426:Netherlands; D012907:Smoking / Q000191:economics*; D000074606:Smoking Prevention / Q000191:economics*; D013660:Taxes