Smokers often exhibit higher levels of calculus (tartar) accumulation, which is a hardened form of plaque that provides a rough, ideal surface for bacterial colonization and a potent mechanical irritant to the gum line
In 2023, kretek accounted for over 85% of total cigarette sales in Indonesia, with domestic consumption exceeding 160 billion sticks annually, as reported by the Indonesian Association of Cigarette and Tobacco Producers (GAPCI)
Excise taxes are legitimate when certain negative externalities associated with a type of transaction or type of consumption can be identified, and they can work well to establish user-fee systems
Except for ethanol and nicotine, for which certain distributions could be fitted to the data for the European countries, uniform probability distributions were chosen in all other cases as only minimum/maximum prevalence values for Europe in total were available
Hair tests for nicotine are not as reliable because of the varying genetic makeups, hair problems, and latent differences in humans
