The health-related costs attributable to tobacco use in the EU
Tobacco is one of the leading causes of death in the EU and globally. While tobacco health effects are widely explored and updated, recent studies on tobacco costs for society are lacking.
The aim of this work is to estimate the health-related economic burden of tobacco for society in the EU.
By adopting an epidemiological approach, this report considers the list of diseases linked with tobacco use and assesses both direct and indirect tobacco-related costs for each disease and each EU country.
Data on the relative risks of tobacco-related diseases and the costs of each disease considered are taken from literature. All data on smoking prevalence is taken from the Eurostat European Interview Health Survey for the year 2019. Costs data are inflated to the year 2023.
Our results indicate a health-related tobacco costs for the EU of EUR 80.7 billion associated with tobacco use, of which 40.4 are direct and 40.2 are indirect costs.
The results of this study provide an updated health-related cost of tobacco for the EU and for each member state, crucial to define new tobacco-related policies. A cost comparison across member states, as well as a cost comparison across the different tobacco-related diseases is also provided, to assess the heterogeneity of the tobacco economic burden by country and by disease.
SALARI Paola;
MARAGKOUDAKIS Petros-Achillefs;
WOLLGAST Jan;
2026-04-07
Publications Office of the European Union
JRC146176
978-92-68-38320-9 (online),
1831-9424 (online),
EUR 40659,
OP KJ-01-26-126-EN-N (online),
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC146176,
10.2760/5833286 (online),
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