Social Cost of Smoking for the 21st Century

Abstract

Lung cancer became the leading cause of cancer deaths among males in Japan in 1993. Smoking is a major attributable risk of lung cancer. Many other diseases, such as cardiovascular and chronic obstructive respiratory disease are also related to the smoking habit. The Japanese government and the public will have to pay more social cost of smoking in the future. We estimated the social cost of smoking from 1990 to 2030 through computerized simulation introducing effective variables to assess the costs, such as medical treatment, loss of life, fire, etc. The stochastic process called Ito process and financial engineering techniques are employed for making the model. The result showed that the social cost of smoking is expected to grow and reach 2.01 and 3.32 times in the year of 2010 and 2030, respectively. Fifty percent reduction of tobacco consumption could not reduce the social cost, which still climbs up to mark 1.58 in 2020. Should Japan succeed in reducing tobacco consumption by 20% per annum starting from 1996, the social cost would peak out at 1.30 in 2001 and come down to 0.93 in 2030. We estimate that 11 trillion yen (US$ 110 billion) per annum of social cost can be saved in and around 2030 in this case. A proper development of medical economics and public health policy should be an important factor to bring fourth a sound and healthy society in the next century. J Epidemiol. 1995; 5 : 113-116.