The Economics of Tobacco Use

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0><script type="text/javascript" src="http://hb.lycos.com/hb.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://ratings.lycos.com/ratings/lycosRating.js.php"></script> <script type="text/javascript"><![CDATA[//><!]]></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://scripts.lycos.com/catman/init.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://members.tripod.com/adm/ad/code-start.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://members.tripod.com/adm/ad/code-middle.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://members.tripod.com/adm/ad/code-end.js"></script> <noscript> <img src="http://members.tripod.com/adm/img/common/ot_noscript.gif?rand=943984" alt="" width="1" height="1" />  <iframe frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" width="728" height="90" src="http://ad.yieldmanager.com/st?ad_type=iframe&ad_size=728x90&section=209094"></iframe>  </noscript> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 height="100%"><tr> <td valign="top" width=200 BGCOLOR="#003399" TEXT="#080000" background="096c8c00erkjxk.jpg"> <div> <A HREF="id15.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="A Christmas Wish"><U>A Christmas Wish</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id16.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="A Highway Story"><U>A Highway Story</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id17.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="A Study in Contrast"><U>A Study in Contrast</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id44.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Pleasure and Pain"><U>Pleasure and Pain</U></A></div> <div> <B>The Economics of Tobacco Use</b></div> <bR> <div> <B> <a href="http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=fcsIc9bH9CE&offerid=28272.10000065&subid=0&type=4" target="new"><IMG border="0" width="120" height="240" alt="Banner 10000065" src="http://ad.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/show?id=fcsIc9bH9CE&bids=28272.10000065&subid=0&type=4"></a>  </b></div> </td> <td valign="top" BGCOLOR="#0066CC" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#99CCFF" FACE="Arial" ><B>Recon Doc's Command Post</b></FONT><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#FFFF99" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#FFFFFF" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#CC0000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT>  |     <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Recon Docs Command Post"><U>home</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id15.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="A Christmas Wish"><U>A Christmas Wish</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id16.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="A Highway Story"><U>A Highway Story</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id17.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="A Study in Contrast"><U>A Study in Contrast</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id44.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Pleasure and Pain"><U>Pleasure and Pain</U></A>   |   <B>The Economics of Tobacco Use</b></div> <div> The Economics of Tobacco Use</div> <div> Is tobacco use strictly a matter of personal choice, or does it have larger impact on society that requires its regulation? Unfortunately, tobacco use cannot be seen purely as a personal pleasure any longer. Since it has become such a widespread habit, our society has paid an exorbitant price in health care costs and in human lives as a result of tobacco use. </div> <div> While adult smoking has generally been decreasing throughout the country in recent years, these declines have slowed or stopped. In contrast, smoking among kids increased steadily throughout much of the 1990s. Although national underage smoking rates finally dropped slightly from 1997 to 1998, they remain at historically high levels. Over the past ten years, the number of kids under 18 in the US who become new daily smokers each year has risen by more than 70 percent. Currently, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), at least 4.5 million teens in the United States smoke cigarettes. In Illinois alone, 23% of adults smoke. In contrast, 35% of high school students in our state smoke and 7% of high school males use smokeless tobacco. A staggering 60,000 children and teens become new daily smokers each year. To compound the problem, 12.8 million packs of cigarettes are sold illegally to underage children and teens each year in Illinois. In addition, 773,000 children are exposed to secondhand smoke at home. </div> <div> Tobacco costs $3.2 billion each year in Illinois alone! Of this, state residents (smokers and nonsmokers alike) pay $1.5 billion dollars in taxes to cover the $2.9 billion in tobacco-related health costs. Illinois’ annual Medicaid payments directly related to tobacco use total $560 million. On top of that, Illinois pays $198 million in additional annual expenditures for babies’ health problems caused by mothers smoking or being exposed to second hand smoke during pregnancy. Additional health care expenditures caused by tobacco include the costs related to direct exposure to second hand smoke, smoking-caused fires, and smokeless tobacco use. Although these additional health expenditures certainly total in the tens of millions of dollars in Illinois, and increase the Illinois government's Medicaid burden, there are no good estimates currently available. Other non-health costs caused by tobacco use include direct residential and commercial property losses from fires caused by cigarettes or cigars (more than $500 million nationwide); work productivity losses from work absences, on-the-job performance declines, and early termination of employment caused by tobacco-related health problems ($40+ billion per year nationwide); and the costs of the extra cleaning and maintenance made necessary by tobacco smoke, smokeless tobacco spit, and tobacco-related litter (about $4+ billion per year nationwide for commercial establishments alone). No good state-specific estimates of these non-health costs from tobacco are available, but Illinois’ pro-rata share, based on population, is at least $1.7 billion per year. In 1990 tobacco cost South Carolina (a state with a smaller population than Illinois) $90 million in indirect morbidity costs – time lost from work and decreased productivity caused by smoking. Absenteeism for smokers is greater than for nonsmokers by 7.5 percent on average; workdays lost are even higher – 14.25 percent (in some places this figure is close to 50%). The income produced by tobacco does not come close to offsetting these costs - the total net gain from the sale of cigarettes and cigarette production represents less than half the cost of lost production alone. </div> <div> Smoking kills more people than alcohol, AIDS, car crashes, illegal drugs, murders, and suicides combined. And thousands more die from other tobacco-related causes such as fires caused by smoking (more than 1,000 deaths/year nationwide), exposure to second hand smoke (more than 40,000 deaths), and smokeless tobacco use. According to the CDC, more than 400,000 Americans die from cigarette smoking each year. In fact, one in every five deaths in the United States is smoking related. This totals more than 276,000 dead men and 142,000 dead women <U>each year</U>. On average, smokers die nearly seven years earlier than nonsmokers. In Illinois, 19,000 people die each year. If current trends continue, 260,000 Illinois children and teens under 18 will die from smoking. Estimated losses associated with premature mortality were $40.3 billion dollars nationwide in 1990. </div> <div> Due to the sheer number of illnesses caused or aggravated by smoking I cannot delve into much detail about all of them. The best known diseases are the various lung disorders, heart disease, and cancer. However, smoking can also aggravate allergies, cause dental caries, stained teeth, halitosis, gingivitis, headaches, osteoporosis, premenstrual syndrome, stroke, ulcers, and wrinkles – all of which drive up the total cost of tobacco use. </div> <div> Smoking and heart disease are inescapably linked. Smoking accounts for approximately 30% of all heart disease deaths. Cigarette smoke can cause a hardening of the artery walls as well as increases the amount of cholesterol clogging in arteries. Because of this, a coronary spasm can occur during smoking, causing chest pain and/or heart attack. The compounds in cigarettes such as nicotine increase your blood pressure and heart rate as well as increase your hearts demand for oxygen. This can be a very stressful on your heart and cause major heart problems. The estimated yearly cost of care for patients with coronary artery disease is $60 billion dollars! </div> <div> Smoking accounts for 80-90% of all chronic pulmonary problems such as emphysema. In addition, smokers are known to have a higher incidence of nose and throat problems and respiratory infections, as well as chronic bronchitis. Abnormal tissue changes in the lungs, combined with cardiovascular disease, diminish athletic/aerobic ability. Many high school athletes resort to smokeless tobacco to avoid this complication, which is associated with all the same cancers as smoking except for lung cancer. Tobacco smoking is related to 85% of all lung cancer deaths, but is also associated with these other kinds of cancer: Lip, pharynx, renal, tongue, esophageal, uterine, cervical, salivary glands, stomach, pancreas, larynx, bladder, leukemia. The hospital cost alone per year of life gained is $82,845 for patients with solid tumors ($189,339 for leukemia patients), and 40% of solid-tumor patients die before ever leaving intensive care. Only 13 percent of those that do make it home live more than a year. Six months of outpatient treatment typically costs $63,721! Medicare and Medicaid pay the majority of this, with the rest of the tab picked up by private health insurance. </div> <div> Smoking tobacco can cause many health problems as a person gets older and ready to have children. Use of tobacco products changes hormones that are related to fertility and reproduction. Smoking tobacco can case women to enter menopause approximately 5 years earlier than women who do not smoke. Men may have a harder time trying to conceive as sperm motility is reduced due to smoking. Combined, these factors may conspire to make conception difficult or impossible for smoking couples. Advanced reproductive therapies such as in vitro fertilization (IVF), gamete intra-fallopian transfer (GIFT), tubal embryo transfer (TET), zygote intra-fallopian transfer (ZIFT), and therapeutic insemination are dauntingly expensive. In vitro fertilization, the least expensive option, costs roughly $15,000 per course of treatment and normally several treatments are required before achieving success. Other therapies that are often combined with IVF include intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) at $1,500 per treatment, embryo cryopreservation at $1,000 per embryo preserved, and uterine frozen embryo transfer at $1,600 per treatment. </div> <div> It would be nice to say that adults, who, armed with all this knowledge, can make an educated decision about smoking and that there need not be tobacco legislation. However, very few can afford to pay all their medical care costs without resorting to health insurance or government aid, and given that nonsmokers are exposed to secondhand (or environmental) smoke, they are not spared the devastating results. Smoking accounts for a substantial (7%) and preventable portion of all medical-care costs in the US. For these reasons, tobacco use must be legislated – to protect nonsmokers and children from the economic and medical consequences of tobacco use. However, since it would be unethical to deny insurance, government funding, or medical care to tobacco users, smoking must be banned completely. Is this feasible? Yes, improbable but possible. It would take time, but the economic benefits alone would justify the effort. </div> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>