Tobacco use takes a tremendous toll on adults, children and the overall
health care system:
•
Every day, more than 4,000 kids try smoking for the
first time
•
45 million adults smoke in the U.S.
•
Annual public and private health care expenditures caused by smoking:
$75 billion
•
Medicaid payments made by federal and state governments for smoking-related
Medicaid payments: $23.5 billion
•
Annual productivity losses caused by smoking each year: more than
$82 billion
Smoking cessation is among the most cost-effective clinical preventive services.
Smoking cessation programs save lives and health care costs related to treating
sick and dying smokers. In fact, cessation programs are more cost-effective
than several preventive services -- such as mammography, colon cancer screening
and PAP tests -- routinely covered by insurers(1) .
Constance Weisner, DrPH; Jennifer Mertens, MA; Sujaya
Parthasarathy, PhD; Charles Moore, MD, MBA; Yun Lu, MPH
October 10, 2001 JAMA / volume:286 (page: 1715)
1Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Best Practices for Comprehensive
Tobacco Control Programs, August 1999, p. 24.
