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
Nearly everyone knows and understands that smoking is not good for their health. No mystery here.
When I first finished my residency program and started my medical practice I was fully focused on helping people stop smoking as cigarette smoking is generally regarded as the leading cause of preventable death in the United States.
What I have subsequently learned is that this is just simply not true at all.
Consuming sugar and not unresolved emotional traumas cause far more death and disability than smoking ever will.
That is one of the reasons why I rarely focus on having people stop smoking. I have found that if a person is eating the right foods and exercising it is very unusual for them to remain a smoker.
The eating plan and exercise synergistically help to resolve the underlying anxiety that many people chose to resolve with smoking.
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