2023-10-11 04:35:00
By deciding to increase the amount of excise duties on tobacco, the Federal Government hopes to get its hands on a windfall of several million euros each year. A colossal sum, which is nevertheless only a cigarette butt in a packet of expenses. Because if tax revenues from the sale of cigarettes and hand-rolling tobacco are closer to 3 billion euros annually, the expenditure would be much higher. According to a study on the real cost of cigarettes, cited by the General Drug Policy Unit in its 2022-2028 interfederal strategy, smoking cost, in 2012, nearly 13 billion euros to today’s society (health care, waste treatment, prevention campaign), and only brought in two. That’s a societal cost of nearly 11 billion euros per year.
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Since then, the figures have not been updated in any other study on the subject. But with inflation, this sum is certainly much higher. In France, the economist Pierre Kopp, working for the French Observatory of Drugs and Addictive Tendencieshad for example established the annual social cost estimated at 156 billion euros for 2019 alone. On a Belgian scale, this would represent 26 billion euros.
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Taking this very wide range, let’s face it, this would mean that smoking would cost each Belgian between €1,000 and €2,300 per year. Including, therefore, those who have never taken a single drag on a cigarette.
Smoking which also has a direct cost for our businesses. The average time to smoke a cigarette being eight minutes, including the journey to the smoking room or outside, a smoker who enjoys a cigarette every two hours would spend half an hour of his daily working time smoking. At €25 gross per hour according to the average salary in Belgium, this would mean a daily cost of €12.50 for his boss. That is nearly €2,875 gross per year per smoking worker paid by the company.
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