Usually the emphasis of the bad effects of smoking is placed on the damaging consequences for the health of the smoker and secondhand smoker. I do not want to downplay the health aspects. Tobacco consumption is indeed the largest avoidable cause of death in our society.
Smoking is also expensive for companies.
In 1993 Shell calculated that one smoker added a financial burden on the company of about 2,000 guilders a year due to lower productivity and more sick leave as a result of lung, and cardiovascular disease. However, these are still our own selfish interests in combatting the smoking addiction. If we looked beyond our own interests and allowed ourselves to see the damage to the environment in tobacco-producing areas and to the economy of the poor in the Third World, then we add a powerful extra dimension to our critical view of smoking and we might be able to gain greater support for measures to combat the habit. Wood is commonly used in poor countries, like in most of Africa, in Brazil, in large parts of India, Thailand and the Philippines. In the south of Brazil alone there are 93,000 wood-burning tobacco sheds.