Smoking costs billions more than tobacco taxes, says report

Smoking costs England £49.2bn each year in lost productivity and service costs, plus an additional £25.9bn lost quality-adjusted life years due to premature death from smoking. The figure for lost productivity is far greater than previous estimates as it includes areas of lost productivity where the impact of smoking has not previously been estimated.

One of the new areas of analysis is the loss to the economy from people spending their money on tobacco, which generates fewer UK jobs and lower profit margins for retailers compared with other products and services people would purchase if they didn’t buy tobacco. This found that if no one bought tobacco in England, the total benefit to the economy in gross value added would be £13.6bn.