Smoking costs at least P400 billion, worsens poverty, experts say

The poorest of the poor spend much more on cigarettes than they do on sending their kids to school. How much more depends on who does the computing. Some experts estimate smoking costs at least P400 billion a year, including under-reported spending and hidden costs. Government statisticians determined that the poorest 30 percent of Filipino households spent P5.63 billion on cigarettes, P 1.41 billion more than what they shell out for their school children’s daily allowance and schooling expenses of about P4.22 billion. Those numbers also compare with the 2011 budget for the operations of public elementary and high schools in Quezon City, Pasay, and Marikina amounting to P4.16 billion. In contrast, the better-off 70 percent use only 0.8 percent of their budget on nicotine pleasures and set aside 4.7 percent or P108 billion on education expenses, roughly equivalent to 56 percent of this year’s whole DepEd budget. But some experts on health economics say the National Statistics Office (NSO) figures are ‘grossly understated.’ Under-reported spending, hidden costs The Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS) done in 2009 pegged at P339.20 the average monthly expenditure on smoking by Filipino men while women smokers spend about P232.80 a month . GATS estimates there are at 14.6 million male smokers, so their nicotine habit sums up to P4.95 billion per month. Add P651.84 million from the women smokers, and the monthly total is P5.6 billion. Multiply that by 12 months, and the annual average zooms up to P67.2 billion — only for 2009, that is. These calculations are much higher than those of NSO’s, which, in its Family Income and Expenditures Survey (FIES), also in 2009, found that Filipino households nationwide buy at least P27 billion pesos worth of cigarettes, or much higher than the P22.8 billion in 2003 and the P23.8 billion in 2006. Smoking and poverty Deborah Sy of the non-profit advocacy group Health Justice said, “The FIES studies are consistent with the findings of health experts who have researched the links between smoking and poverty." She clarified that the FIES respondents are often housewives who are unaware of the cigarette spending habits of their husbands and children. “The FIES data under-reports tobacco spending. More men smoke than the women and the mothers may not know that they have children who smoke, so the NSO figures are limited to cigarette purchases the mothers are aware of," Sy explained. About one in two Filipino men smokes, according to the GATS 2009, while only 9 percent of Filipina adults puff those tobacco sticks. Among the youth, the incidence of smoking is at 27 percent or about 3 in 10 youngsters, based on the youth counterpart of the GATS completed in 2007. Experts have ascertained that smoking worsens poverty not just because of the billions spent on cigarettes. The costs run up to billions of pesos more in health costs, lost man-hours and productivity from people getting sick, and thousands of lives lost. The World Health Organization said that 20,000 Filipinos a year die of smoking-related diseases. Globally, WHO said the death toll is at 6 million. Health advocates stressed that the official statistics “grossly underestimate" the costs of tobacco use. Sy pointed to a 2006 study of the Department of Health and the University of the Philippines – Manila, which estimates productivity losses and health costs of smoking in the conservative range of P130 billion to P330 billion. The International Union against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease said, “Money spent on tobacco reduces the amount of money available to spend on food, health care, shelter and education." Sy explained that smokers, especially among the poor, fail to realize the link between their tobacco use and poverty because the cost of a stick of cigarette is relatively cheap compared to the costs of school supplies and baon of school children. — VS, GMA News