Economic Cost of Tobacco Use in India, 2004

Tobacco use, because of its huge adverse effects on morbidity and mortality, entails enormous costs not only to the persons using it but also to the society at large. However, the economic cost of tobacco use has never been estimated at the national level in India, the second largest consumer of tobacco in the world, with an estimated 250 million people aged 10 years or above consuming tobacco in some form. This paper estimated the economic burden of tobacco use in India during 2004 associated with four major categories of disease: tuberculosis, respiratory diseases, cardiovascular diseases and neoplasms. We used a cross sectional approach and calculated the tobacco-attributable fraction of costs for each disease group. The study estimated that the direct medical cost of treating tobacco related diseases attributable to tobacco use in India amounted to $907 million for smoked tobacco and $285 million for smokeless tobacco in the year 2004. The indirect morbidity costs attributable to tobacco use, which includes the cost of caregivers and cost in terms of work loss on account of treatment, amounted to $398 million for smoked tobacco and $104 million for smokeless tobacco for the same year. Costs are disaggregated by disease, gender and type of tobacco product. 88% of the total cost estimated was contributed by men. The total economic cost of tobacco ($1.7 billion) was found to be 16% more than the total tax revenue collected from tobacco in India.