Adding Up Tobacco's Toll On America

November is a good month to reconsider the cigarette. Not only is it National Lung Cancer and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Awareness month, but November 20th is the American Cancer Society's Great American Smokeout, a day when smokers are encouraged to put down the pack, if only for the day. As someone who regularly encourages friends to think twice about lighting up, I know this isn't an easy proposition--nicotine is damn addictive and the tobacco industry, who strives to keep their products accessible and inexpensive, has the upper hand. Talking about lung cancer, COPD, or myriad health effects from tobacco often does little to dissuade my friends--or the 43.4 million adult smokers in the U.S.--from stepping out for a smoke.

And really, who cares if they do? It's a free country. Unfortunately, tobacco use puts an enormous toll on our society, and all of us, smokers or not, have to pay for it. While the public picks up the tab, the tobacco executives make out like bandits with their huge salaries, and distract the country with junk science and free Marlboro T-shirts.

So, although preventing young people from starting in the first place is the best protection against this, encouraging adults to quit is the next best thing. And since quitting smoking doesn't just benefit an individual's health--it benefits the whole society--there are some real costs of tobacco to keep in mind. Maybe they won't help someone stub the butt for good, but they just might get people thinking.

The True Cost of Tobacco
Though smokers pay the ultimate penalty with disease or death, we all absorb the cost of tobacco use, either directly, through taxes, or indirectly, through increased healthcare costs and economic losses.

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[1will]

How about a little freedom of choice? Aborting babies and not showing ID at the polls seems to be the only freedoms you guys believe in.

[CologneCitizen]

In a free country it is everybody's personal choice to smoke or not. The USA has the habit of putting great emphasis on minor issues to distract the public from the important ones, like healthcare, safe pensions, education, etc.

Americans still get excited about gay marriage, abortion or a naked nipple at a ball game, all issues where other civlized countries have come to proper terms of dealing with naturally in the interest of their people, which means: LET EVERYBODY DECIDE INDIVIDUALLY.

[AZBunny]

Yet just this week, Congress extended the life of tabacco subsidies.

also my husband who smoked for 15 years and my father who smoke for over 40 years both quit smoking a long time ago. How??? cold turkey.

[SiberianRat]

I was a smoker for 22 years--thankfully, I've been off cigs for a little over 3 yrs. One thing I do know from MANY attempts and failures at quitting--you gotta be ready and have the courage to quit. Smokers know all of the awful things about them, and for the last 10 years I smoked, there was barely a day that went by that I didn't wish I could quit or that I hadn't even started in the first place. Supporting smokers who are trying to quit is vital, and if they fail, be compassionate. I'm sure my friends and family rolled their eyes after the seemingly millionth time I was "definitely going to do it this time." However, not it appears to have finally stuck, and the freedom is awesome. It's an amazing addiction though, so be kind to those who are struggling--just my opinion.

[evekendall]

The following people are among the many who have stopped smoking using Allen Carr's "Easyway to Quit Smoking:"

Ellen DeGeneres
Sir Anthony Hopkins
Sir Richard Branson

Video testimonials from these people are available at the website:

http://www.theeasywaytostopsmoking.com/Home/tabid/125/Default.aspx

Ashton Kutcher, a heavy smoker, read the book and quit. Here he is on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno:

http://www.theeasywaytostopsmoking.com/HiddenPages/IntheMedia/tabid/77/Default.aspx

The book is $24.00, but seminars and tapes are available.

I have no financial interest in this. I just read about it a few days ago. My interest is because cigarettes killed my mother (COPD), my father (throat cancer), and my only brother (lung cancer.) If anyone you love is a smoker who would like to quit, please tell them about this. It might help.

[QueenOfViolets]

I think the economic impact of tobacco is mixed.

According to Paul Solmon, the economist on the Lehrer News Hour, tobacco smoking has a beneficial impact on health care costs in that it's much more expensive to die from the kinds of diseases that come along with old age than it is to die prematurely from a rapid killer like heart disease or lung cancer.

If you compare for example the person who drops dead of a smoking-related heart attack to the person who spends 5 or 10 years in nursing homes dying from general age-related decline. I think you'll find the cheaper bill to foot is the one from the smoker.

Of course this is a cold-blooded, purely economic analysis but it is what it is.

Emotionally speaking, nobody wants their loved one to die prematurely, even if it does save the health care system billions of dollars.

But still, we should be honest about the money. When you add up the costs, you also need to add in the savings, otherwise you're just hypnotizing yourself with a version of the real world you've constructed for your own benefit and you're not dealing with the real world at all.

Anti-smoking ideology is all well and good, but money gets spent in the real world.

[total frizz]

In the past two years I lost my mother to the ravages of cigarettes (COPD) and my husband lost his leg due to PVD caused by cigarette smoking. I don't smoke, but I have to live with the results. So, joke if you want to or make pronouncements about how the government shouldn't be involved; but know that you will be affected whether you smoke or not. We control poisons; cigarettes are a poison.

[QueenOfViolets]

That's terrible, I feel for your loss, but the government can't change the fact that we are mortal and death is our lot no matter how well behaved we are and how well we follow all the laws and rules.

[Systematic1]

Are we still crying about this? Look. Smokers smoke. You can't legislate human behavior. Council them. Warn them. But free will is free. I see more and more people smoking now than ever before. It's their choice. That first cigarette is their choice. You have to take that first puff before you can smoke enough to get addicted to the nicotine and no one (and I mean no one) liked that first puff. In my youth I tried one once. Coughed my lungs out after one puff and never touched it again. No tobacco company made me try that cigarette, a friend did. Just as friends have been doing for years.

Hasn't big tobacco paid for it's crime of not warning consumers by now? Food producers load their products with salt and sugar to make them taste better. Restaurants cook with butter, lard and salt to make their foods taste better. So really, tobacco companies just did the same thing. Soon insurance companies will be raising premiums for every pound you are overweight. Obesity related illnesses cost just as much as smoking related illnesses to the consumer.

[nogimmicks]

the deadly and addictive tobacco and guns are legally pushed to the public. The most addictive drugs (and tobacco) must be outlawed, however the less addictive ones need to be decriminalized. It is just like with speeding, just take them to the families of people killed by reckless drivers. The same 5 visits thing can be done as a provision of selling marijuana.

[daisyfield]

nogimmicks said - "The most addictive drugs (and tobacco) must be outlawed..."
-----------------------------

Why? Because the war on drugs and Prohibition worked out so very well?

MOST EVERYTHING will kill you if you do it to the extreme. I suppose the next thing I know I'll be arrested for eating a bag of potato chips as I walk down the street. If the Democrats are wise, they will leave the gun owners alone, the smokers alone, the eaters alone, and do the job of getting the economy back. And by the way, if some people had their way and the tobacco industry was destroyed, the unemployment figures would soar. Not only the individuals that work directly in tobacco factories but other factories who supply that industry depend on the continuation of the tobacco industry. To all of you who want to force your fellow citizens into "correct" behavior - be sure
to have your wallets open, because a lot of unemployed people will be coming to you for a handout. And while you're at it, after you force all the tobacco factories to close and the sugar factories and the potato chip factories etc etc etc, then let the people know what types of jobs they can get, that is, besides internet based jobs which produce nothing tangible.

[SaucyB]

please, make some more decisions for me!

[naschkatze]

I can't resist: do you have a sister named Chablis?

[GlassManDan]

Gotta run out for a pack of smokes,,, be back....

[mellene]

Tobacco may be bad for Americans but it's been allowed to happen due to special interest groups and government corruption. Marijuana is far less harmful but it'll never be legalized because corporations can't control it's growth and make vast profits from it.

[MexDiva]

If you want to make ilegal the consumption of tobacco or increase taxes to smokers, I want to increase taxes on fast food that make people fat. You might say: 'there is no second-hand fatness.' You are right, nevertheless I have to pay the same price for an airplane ticket that a person the double my size and taxes for a bunch of disseases caused by eating disorders...why?

IBecuase we live in a civilized word where tobacco and eating extra fat and sugar are both addiction and choices. I don't want to live in an extremist society with a bunch of radicals. Control the smoke, control the consumption of fast food in a compassionate way...

I am an ex-smoker and I am so happy to live a smoke-free life. But forcing someone else is not the right way.