WHO: Smoking costs the world economy $1 trillion per year

Smoking and its side effects cost the world’s economies more than $1 trillion and kill about 6 million people each year — with deaths expected to rise by more than a third by 2030, according to a new report from the World Health Organization and the National Cancer Institute.

Those losses exceed annual global revenue from tobacco taxes, estimated to be $269 billion in 2013-14, according to the report released Tuesday. Of that, less than $1 billion was invested in tobacco control.

The massive study called smoking one of the largest causes of preventable premature death in the world. And unless countries around the world begin putting more tobacco control policies in place, it warned, the ballooning consequences will become not just a global public health issue but an economic issue.

“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,” Oleg Chestnov, WHO’s assistant director-general for noncommunicable diseases and mental health, said in a statement.

More than 60 authors –physicians, public health experts, researchers and other scientists –contributed to the report, which was peer-reviewed by more than 70 reviewers.

Most of those who suffer health problems from tobacco use live in developing countries, according to the report. With 80 percent of the world’s 1.1 billion smokers living in low- and middle-income countries, the poor are disproportionately burdened by tobacco use, the report said.

To save lives, WHO recommended that countries adopt policies to control tobacco use, including taxing and raising the price of cigarettes, restricting marketing efforts.

Experts noted some of the strongest resistance to tobacco control policies have come from governments, who fear — whether genuinely or because of pressure from lobbyists — that limiting tobacco will hurt the economy.

The tobacco industry “will scare you that tobacco-control measures are anti-poor when in fact it’s the overwhelming evidence is actually the opposite,” Jeremiah Paul of the WHO’s Tobacco Control Economics Unit said during a telephone call with reporters Tuesday.