NST Leader: GEG's slow journey

Malaysian smokers have disconcerting statistics: 20,000 out of 6.6 million smokers die annually, resulting in RM275.3 billion in lost productivity. Then there’s the economic misallocation and loss of earnings: RM2.9 billion spent on heart disease and lung cancer treatments, slicing 0.6 per cent off the gross domestic product or 16.5 per cent of the national health expenditure.