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The Burden of Tobacco Use

Each year, an estimated 438,000 people in the United States die prematurely from smoking or exposure to secondhand smoke, and another 8.6 million have a serious illness caused by smoking. For every person who dies from smoking, 20 more people suffer from at least one serious tobacco-related illness. Despite these risks, approximately 45.3 million U.S. adults smoke cigarettes.

Coupled with this enormous health toll is the significant economic burden of tobacco use—more than $96 billion per year in medical expenditures and another $97 billion per year resulting from lost productivity.

Since 1964, 29 Surgeon General’s reports on smoking and health have concluded that tobacco use is the single most avoidable cause of disease, disability, and death in the United States. Over the past 4 decades, cigarette smoking has caused an estimated 12 million deaths, including 4.1 million deaths from cancer, 5.5 million deaths from cardiovascular diseases, 2.1 million deaths from respiratory diseases, and 94,000 infant deaths related to mothers smoking during pregnancy. Smokeless tobacco, cigars, and pipes also have deadly consequences, including lung, larynx, esophageal, and oral cancers.

The harmful effects of smoking do not end with the smoker. More than 126 million nonsmoking Americans, including children and adults, are regularly exposed to secondhand smoke. Even brief exposure can be dangerous because nonsmokers inhale many of the same carcinogens and toxins in cigarette smoke as smokers.

Secondhand smoke exposure causes serious disease and death, including heart disease and lung cancer in nonsmoking adults and sudden infant death syndrome, acute respiratory infections, ear problems, and more frequent and severe asthma attacks in children. Each year, primarily because of exposure to secondhand smoke, an estimated 3,000 nonsmoking Americans die of lung cancer, more than 46,000 (range: 22,700–69,600) die of heart disease, and about 150,000–300,000 children younger than 18 months have lower respiratory tract infections.

Smoking rates among youth fell during 2000–2003, but remained unchanged during 2003–2006. Recent surveys indicate that rates may again be on the decline among both youth and adults. However, if the nation is to achieve the objectives in Healthy People 2010, comprehensive, evidence-based approaches for preventing smoking initiation and increasing cessation need to be fully implemented.

To read the rest of these fact sheets on smoking from the CDC, please click here: http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/publications/aag/osh.htm