On average, tobacco users lose fifteen years of life. Today, 5.7 percent of total health expenditures are spent treating smoking-related illnesses, and 12 percent of all adult deaths worldwide result from this habit. In fact, the total annual cost of smoking is almost 2 percent of global gross domestic product, which is also about 40 percent of what all the world’s governments spent on education.4 In total, nicotine addiction burdens the global economy with more than $1.4 trillion in health care and lost productivity each year.
