The World Bank's Tobacco Economics

Economists have argued for two decades that smokers do not transfer costs to non-smokers as smokers, besides paying heavy tobacco taxes, typically die at an earlier age than non-smokers who ring up important old-age care costs. But the more important question is whether there are net social benefits or costs to smoking. World Bank economists have been using very creative welfare economics to argue that tobacco ultimately inflicts a net cost on society and that the optimal consumption level of tobacco is zero. Those arguments conflict with the standard economic presumption that a good freely produced and consumed produces a net social benefit.