Cost of Cigarette Smoking to Society
* George Kerster (letter, Nov. 8) quoted an article asserting that smoking saves our society money. Here are the real figures:
Cigarette smoking costs our country about $100 billion a year, half in direct and half in indirect expenses. Specifically, it costs the Medicare and Medicaid administrations more than $22 billion per annum in medical bills. The annual cost of oxygen for persons with tobacco-related bronchitis and emphysema alone totals $1 billion per year. Joseph Califano, former secretary of health, education and welfare, has estimated that cigarette smoking is the single most important drain on Medicare revenues, and will reach a total cost of approximately $800 billion by the early part of the next millennium.
In actual fact, each pack of cigarettes sold costs our government just under $1, and our society considerably more. Tobacco control laws will not only save our lives, they will save our money.
FREDERIC W. GRANNIS JR. MD
Head, Section of Thoracic Surgery
City of Hope Medical Center
Duarte
* The substance of “Relishing the Joy of Smoking” (Nov. 5) was a welcome relief from all the well-meaning, and some not so well-meaning, criticism from nonsmokers. I smoke and enjoy it.
I’ll not try to justify or depreciate the health risks of smoking. Smokers aren’t stupid, as some nonsmokers would have you believe. They know the risks they’re taking and evidently measure those risks against the enjoyment of that habit. We all have a terminal illness. Maybe smokers realize that and choose to live fully along the way, without fear.
Each time we drive our automobiles we subject others to passive smoke, yet drivers, probably due to the universality of cars, are not attacked.
HARLIE COOLEY
Laguna Hills
* When I was in high school in the mid-’20s we had a principal who was very much against smoking. His favorite comment was that there was a fire at one end and a fool at the other.
Really, nothing has changed. It is as true today as it was then.
HAROLD HANOVER
San Bernardino