Smoking Costs $1.3b in Healthcare

Cigarette smoking adds as much as $1.3 billion (52,200 billion rials) to the annual health care spending in Iran, the Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS) announced last week. Smoking is the reason for 20% of all preventable deaths in the country, IRNA reported. Tobacco smoke is associated with development of different diseases including lung cancer, cardiovascular diseases, and other types of cancer, and life expectancy for smokers is at least 10 years shorter than for nonsmokers. In 2016, Iranians smoked 60-70 billion cigarettes. Statistics show that 14-15% of the 80 million population are regular smokers.