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Smoking Ban
Health impact
Prohibition Fliers
Economic Impact
On NY Bars
Smoking Costs society 92 billion dollars annually in lost productivity.
The CDC (Centers for Disease control) definition of productivity is; lost wages due to premature death. Theses “lost
wages” are not a burden born by society. When a worker dies a replacement worker is hired and the wages are not
lost but, are transferred to another worker and the entire loss is born by the family of the smoker
Non Smokers pay for the increased health care costs associated with smoking.
The CDC estimates the cost of treating smoking related illness at 75.5 billion dollars annually. This represents just 8
percent of total health care cost in the United States. Nationwide, 23 percent of the population smokes, 47% of the
population are former smokers. From these statistics it is easy to see that smokers do not over tax the health care
system.
Smokers pay around 12 billion dollars a year in taxes on cigarettes. The same CDC report estimates that 438
thousand smokers die 14 years earlier than non smokers. If that estimate is true, those smokers will not collect 14
years of Social Security benefits equaling at minimum, a savings of 51 billion dollars to the Social Security Fund.
Smoking is the reason Medicaid and Medicare programs are so costly.
Medicare and Medicaid are expensive because they are programs used by the aged and the poor. These programs
account for 60 percent of the total health care expenditures in the United States today. Both of these groups face
challenges that other segments of the population do not. Tremendous waste has been reported in these programs;
Recently it was revealed that Medicaid pays for Viagara, even for convicted sex offenders.
Second hand smoke kills 53,000 to 72,000 people every year.
Political pressure groups have overstated the risk posed by second hand smoke.
There has been a smoking ban in California since 1998. Based on these estimates the California smoking ban should
have prevented 44 to 60 thousand deaths in the last seven years. Census Bureau figures do not support such a
decrease in the state mortality rate.
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51 billion savings from 438,000 premature deaths was calculated by using an estimate of 700 hundred dollars per month per
person over a 14 year period.
CDC report cited was released July 1, 2005:
Annual Smoking-Attributable Mortality, Years of Potential Life Lost, and Productivity Losses --- United States, 1997--2001
