6 January 2025
A team of behavioral scientists at University College London have found smoking just one cigarette reduces lifespan by an average of about 20 minutes (17 minutes for men, 22 minutes for women). While previous studies highlighted risks of smoking 1 cigarette a day, this new study pin-points loss of life down to the minutes.
In the ASEAN region, an estimated 1,390,000,000 sticks are consumed daily by adult smokers. In one year, more than 480,000,000,000 sticks of cigarettes were smoked in the ASEAN region (Table 1). This works out to about 9,620 billion minutes of life lost collectively in a year.
Table 1: Minimum the tobacco industry is liable to pay its customers
| 2022 Stick Sales* (billion) | Minutes of Life Lost from each cigarette** (billion) | |
| Cambodia | 7.5 | 150 |
| Indonesia | 243.7 | 4,874 |
| Lao PDR | 5 | 100 |
| Malaysia | 3 | 60 |
| Myanmar | 15.1 | 302 |
| Philippines | 63.9 | 1,278 |
| Singapore | 2 | 40 |
| Thailand | 33.3 | 666 |
| Vietnam | 107.5 | 2,150 |
| 481 | 9,629 |
*Source: GlobalData [ASEAN Tobacco Control Atlas, pg 12]
Although the tobacco industry now admits smoking is harmful and mouths evidence and data the public health experts and community has been saying for decades, however it refuses to take responsibility for the diseases it causes, disability and loss of lives to its customers. Instead, it continues to market cigarettes and aggressively defends its right to do so (Table 2).
Table 2: Key ASEAN countries who are PMI’s cash cows for stick sales
| Total Stick Sales | PMI Cigarette Market Share | How PMI is Increasing Cigarette Sales | |
| Indonesia | 243,700,000,000 | 33% | Maintaining the right to advertise cigarettes |
| Philippines | 63,900,000,000 | 70% | Relaunching Marlboro brand at retail outlets and offering special promotions |
| Thailand | 33,300,000,000 | 40% | Selling cheaper Marlboro cigarettes than local cigarette brands |
* Source: Sources: GlobalData, Cigarette Reports, 2022
How much should the tobacco industry be made to pay for the lives lost from smoking? A fundamental question is, how much is a life worth?
In 2023, the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) placed a value of a statistical life (VSL) at US$12.5 million.
More than 648,000 people die from tobacco related diseases a year in the ASEAN region and health care costs run into billions of dollars. Article 19 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) enables Parties to hold the tobacco industry liable for the harm its products cause. However, the ASEAN countries have not utilized this article to recover costs tobacco inflicts on society nor seek compensation for lives lost.
The tenth session of the WHO FCTC Conference of the Parties (COP10) in 2024 adopted a decision on Article19 calling on Parties to “consider legislative development or reform to strengthen liability regimes, including to facilitate compensation where appropriate, as part of a comprehensive tobacco control policy;”
Table 3: Top five transnational tobacco companies globally*
| Stick sales** | Revenue (US$) | |
| BAT | 605 billion | 34.06 billion |
| PMI | 621 billion | 31.76 billion |
| Imperia Brands PLC | 21.57 billion | |
| Japan Tobacco Inc | 519.4 billion | 20.23 billion |
| KT&G Corp | 14.8 billion | 4.49 billion |
*Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/259204/leading-10-tobacco-companies-worldwide-based-on-net-sales/ ; excludes the Chinese tobacco monopoly
**Source: https://www.tobaccoasia.com/features/combustibles-not-burnt-out-yet/
It has been 60 years since the US Surgeon-General’s 1964 report linking smoking with lung cancer, but the tobacco industry has not recalled cigarettes nor stopped marketing them. In fact, Big Tobacco sells huge numbers of cigarettes and continues to profit from addictive tobacco products (Table 3).
In 2021, the CEO of Philip Morris International (PMI) made an attention-grabbing statement that the company wants to end cigarettes sales in the U.K. by 2030, and in 2023 that “cigarettes belong in museums”. However, the company continues to sell cigarettes and even relaunched its Marlboro brand.
The tobacco industry has opposed and continues to challenge and undermine strong tobacco control measures, even measures focused just on controlling cigarette sales. For example, in 2023, the industry successfully lobbied the removal of the generational end game measure in Malaysia to ban cigarette sales to those born in January 2007 onwards.
In New Zealand, the first country in the world to ban cigarette sales to those born from January 2009 as part of its vision to make the country smoke-free by 2025, scrapped this measure. According to the Royal College of Pathologists of Australia, the reversal is “unfathomable” and “a backward step” as they “see first-hand the devastating effects that smoking can have on the body”.
In the U.K., the Examination in partnership with the Guardian, exposed how Big Tobacco undermined the radical smoke free generation bill by “making legal threats and lobbying politicians”. The exposé showed how the industry “funded think tanks and campaign groups to argue against the ban in the media and in responses to the government’s consultation over the proposed law.”
Governments must start calculating and step-up efforts to hold the tobacco industry liable for all the harm it has caused and continues to cause.
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