Whenever a pack of cigarettes
is sold in the US, another $7.18 is added to the taxpayer's bill in terms
of medical costs and lost productivity according to the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention.
About 22
billion packs of cigarettes are sold in the US each year, costing
a total of $157 billion in health-related
costs, according to estimates based on 1999 smoking habits.
Cigarette smoking continues
to be the principal cause of premature death in the United States and
imposes substantial costs on society.
In 1995-1999, the years CDC
researchers studied, more than 260,000 men and 178,000 women died every
year due to smoking, either from lung cancer, heart disease or emphysema.
About 600 baby boys and 400
baby girls died each year during that time period because their mothers
smoked during pregnancy, according to CDC estimates. And about $366 million
-- or $704 per pregnant smoker
-- was spent in 1996 caring for infants injured by cigarette smoke.
Overall, smoking killed nearly
half a million people each year in the late 1990s, including about 35,000
people who died of heart disease due to secondhand smoke.
The
economic costs of smoking totaled $3,391 per smoker per year.
The estimates did not include
deaths attributable to cigars, pipe smoking or smokeless tobacco. Also,
the CDC researchers point out that the deaths and health effects in the
late 1990s were due to cigarettes purchased and smoked in the past, when
smoking rates were higher.
Morbidity
and Mortality Weekly Report 2002;51:300-302
| 