How do the price and taxation of tobacco matter?

Context

Tobacco as a silent killer

• Tobacco is a silent killer in our midst that kills an estimated 1.35 million Indians every year.

What the editorial is about?

• The need to stop the increasing affordability of tobacco items and rationalize their taxation under GST.

The cost to be incurred by the tobacco epidemic

• It is the use of tobacco as a result of which more than 3,500 Indians die every single day, as estimated by scientific studies.
• It also comes at a heavy cost: an annual economic burden of more than 1% of India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
• Although not a communicable disease like SARS-CoV-2, the tobacco epidemic — as the World Health Organization characterises it — has some definitive solutions that can reduce the death toll.

How