🚀 go-pugleaf

> Health costs for smokers are dwarfed by the fact that they don't
> live long enough, for the most part, to collect Social Security
> and Medicare: they pay those taxes and die young, usually before
> 65 (for men who smoke, the life expectancy is about 64).

Smokers do indeed die young, often before retirement.
However there are other costs; see below.

> the diseases smokers get tend to be quick deaths (lung cancer
> and heart attacks often kill quickly without long hospital stays).

Lung cancer is a quick death (six months is typical).  It's
not exactly what you'd call cheap.  As cancer deaths go,
it's a bargain.  Now let's take a look at some other deaths
and diseases caused by tobacco.

Gastric ulcers, besides being exquisitely painful, are expensive
to treat.  Cancers of the mouth, pharynx, larynx, esophagus,
pancreas, uterine, cervix, kidney, and bladder are surviveable,
but expensive whether you survive or not.

Emphysema is a long, painful, expensive death.  Chronic heart
disease tends toward slow and expensive.  Bronchitis, other
respiratory diseases, and so on, cost a pretty penny.  Lots
of trips to the doctor, meds, medical equipment, and so on.

U.S. lifetime excess medical care costs for smokers are
about $501 billion more than nonsmokers.  This isn't paid
for by retirement savings we get from dead people.

Lost work productivity is another cost.  Smokers, not surprisingly,
get more colds, flu, etc.  They're out more often.

Tobacco related health care and lost productivity costs together
total about $68 billion per year in the U.S.

Another cost is health care bills incurred by people who do not
smoke as a result of exposure to cigarette smoke.  Children,
for instance, exposed to secondhand smoke make more trips to
the doctor, for respiratory infections, middle ear infections,
and so on.  This too gets added to the bill.

Sources: American Heart Association, American Lung Association.  Web
sites with more information include http://www.cancer.org/costs.html,
http://www.cancer.org/tobacco.html, and the hyper-footnoted report
http://oncolink.upenn.edu/cancer_news/cig_1.html.

BTW, yet another cost is fires started by cigarettes, airplanes crashed,
and so on.  I have no idea how to total this.  Anyone have figures?

-- Jon