Smoking is Costly!!

Computations reveal that for every dollar spent on tobacco, another dollar plus must be spent for cigarette induced disease or is lost due to missing work because of smoking. In 1967 about $9 billion were spent on tobacco in the U.S. In that same year, an estimated $11 billion were lost to the American economy because of cigarette deaths, disease and lost workdays! Therefore, when you total it all up, smoking amounts to at least a twenty billion dollar swindle yearly per petrated upon the naive, gullible American public! Is it worth it??

Over a million people in the United States are forced to lead restricted lives because of emphysema. It incapacitates 1 out of 14 wage earners over 45. A study of British physicians showed the death rate for bronchitis and emphysema for those who smoked 1 -14 cigarettes a day was 6.8 times as high as that for nonsmokers; those who smoked 25 or more cigarettes a day suffered 21 times as many deaths from these causes as nonsmokers!

All in all, today there are about 11 or 12 millions more cases of chronic illness yearly in the United States due to smoking. But isn't it strange - sort of gruesomely macabre in a way? If a doctor developed a vaccine that would prevent lung cancer and protect you from emphysema, bronchitis and heart disease you know that there would be a maddening stampede by millions to be inoculated with it. But even better than such a vaccine would be a simple step - "just stop smoking! How many would take it??

Anyway you slice it , anyway you look at it, smoking is costly. It is one of the most costly habits you could have! The average smoker spends around $14,000 in his lifetime on the smoking habit. A person smoking two packs of cigarettes a day spends upward of $400 a year on his habit - or $4,000 in ten years, $8,000 in twenty years and $20,000 in fifty years of his smoking "lifetime". Think about it!! Can you really afford to smoke, when you add up all the costs, expenses for cigarettes, medical bills, decreased efficiency, increased nervousness, chronic illness and ultimately perhaps terminal cancer??