THURSDAY, April 11, 2002 (HealthDayNews) -- That pack of Camels may set you back $4 at the mini-mart, but it costs society nearly twice that much in lost productivity and health-care expenses.
Cigarette smoking claimed 442,000 lives and cost the country $157 billion each year between 1995 and 1999. That's $7.18 for every one of the 22 billion packs sold annually, says a new government study.
Health-care expenditures accounted for $3.73 of the figure, while the drain on productivity made up the remaining $3.45. The yearly cost for each of the 46.5 million adults who smoke cigarettes nudged $3,400 in 1999.
"While these numbers are huge, they really don't capture all the cost," says Terry Pechacek, a tobacco expert from the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and a co-author of the report. In calculating productivity losses, for example, the study included only lost wages, shortened careers and similar factors. It didn't add in the impact of work missed for smoking breaks and smoking-related illnesses.
Even so, Pechacek adds, the economic burden of smoking dwarfed the average state and federal tax on cigarettes of 80 cents a pack in 2000.
The latest report revised upward smoking's annual death toll from 430,000, a long-quoted figure. It also raised the estimate of the economic burden of cigarettes, previously tabbed at about $96 million.
Medical costs attributable to smoking have risen "dramatically" since 1996, the last time the CDC looked at the issue, Pechacek says. The rise in costs comes despite falling rates of cigarette use among both adults and teens. Health care in general costs more now, and doctors are still treating lingering diseases in current and former smokers.
Lung cancer is the leading cause of smoking-related death, accounting for about 124,000 lives lost a year. Heart disease led to some 82,000 deaths annually, followed by chronic lung obstruction, at about 65,000. These numbers don't include mortality associated with pipes, cigars or smokeless tobacco.
Although the study analyzed the long-term drain of smoking, the habit also has a more immediate effect. More than 1,000 babies died a year between 1995 and 1999 because their mothers smoked. Each year, the study found, smoking-related illnesses in infants cost $366 million, or about $700 for each child of a woman who smoked during pregnancy.
The number of people who die from smoking-related fires each year is high, too: 589 men and 377 women annually between 1994 and 1998.
John L. Kirkwood, president and chief executive officer of the American Lung Association, calls the loss of lives and productivity "totally preventable through proven interventions such as raising tobacco excise taxes and implementing comprehensive tobacco prevention programs."
"We know those steps work," Kirkwood says in a statement. "What is lacking, too often, is the political will to make them happen."
Some have argued that smoking may in fact save governments money by killing people prematurely, thereby avoiding costly social services -- such as nursing care and federal health benefits -- they'd otherwise consume. Indeed, Philip Morris, one of the world's leading tobacco companies, faced harsh criticism last summer for its role in commissioning a cost-benefit analysis which found that smoking in the Czech Republic saved that country nearly $150 million in 1997.
The CDC analysis didn't consider potential savings from premature deaths linked to tobacco use, Pechacek says.
However, Dr. Gilbert Ross, medical director of the American Council on Science and Health, says that debate is, ultimately, irrelevant.
"Let's bear in mind that smoking kills," Ross says. "So why concern ourselves with costs when there are so many other health-related reasons for trying to get smokers to quit and kids not to start? The main reason our national health policy should aim to lower smoking rates is not economic, but health-related, based on preserving and prolonging life."
Tom Ryan, a spokesman for Philip Morris, whose brands include Marlboro, Virginia Slims and Merit, says his company acknowledges smoking is dangerous.
"We make a product that does cause disease, and we agree that there is no safe cigarette," Ryan says.
However, he adds, the company doesn't believe smokers should be penalized further by additional increases in tobacco taxes, which he says were already levied at a higher rate than those for any other consumer product.
"Taxes that single out smokers for their decision to smoke really are not the right direction" for policy makers to be heading, he says.
What To Do
For more on the harmful effects of tobacco use, check out the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Fore more information about tobacco consumption in the United States and abroad, try the American Lung Association.
To learn more about youth smoking, visit the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids or Tobacco.org.
