Social costs of smoking are triple those of illicit drugs

The financial impact of tobacco and alcohol far outweigh the impact of illicit drugs, with smoking costing the community almost three times as much as any other category of drug, according to a study on the social costs of drug use in Australia.

The report, produced for the federal government's national drug strategy, estimates that tobacco accounted for 61.2% of the costs to society of drugs, or $A21bn (£7.6bn; $12.4bn; ‡11.5bn). For the first time the cost calculations included an estimate of the impact of passive smoking and newly available data to assess the effect on the Australian …