I didn’t know that smoking was this costly!

 

I saw an advertisement selling term insurance. The monthly premium was Rs 500 or so. There was a question: do you smoke? You could press a button saying yes and find how the premium would change because of this information. I pressed the button though I am not a smoker to see the cost of this habit. The premium went up to Rs 800!

I did not store a link to that advertisement. But searched the web again for the connection between disease and smoking, and found this:

https://www.icicilombard.com/insurance-information/health-insurance-info/article/what's-killing-india-knowing-top-10-killer-death-diseases-in-india

The article shows causes of death in percentage terms and lists main causes. In some cases, it advises on prevention, by asking you not to smoke or “to avoid consuming tobacco”. The numbers are as follows:

Disease                                              Listed Main Cause                      Listed Prevention Method

Cardiovascular Diseases                 24.8%                                           Avoid Consumption of tobacco         

Respiratory Diseases                       10.2%                                           Avoid Smoking

Malignant & other tumours             9.4%                                           Avoid Tobacco Usage

Digestive Diseases                              5.1%                                           Quit smoking and avoid alcohol

Tuberculosis                                      10.1%  

However, WHO says A Strong Association is: Smoking substantially increases the risk of TB and death from TB.   https://www.who.int/tobacco/resources/publications/factsheet_tb_tobacco_sep09.pdf

How dangerous is Covid-19 compared to the Tobacco Epidemic? Confirmed Deaths due to Covid-19 as of 9-Aug-2020 have been 43,379. The total number of deaths in India per year is approximately 95 Lakhs according to Wikipedia.

Srinivasan Ramani