In my ongoing efforts to quit smoking, I compiled some facts and figures about various aspects of smoking. From the outset, I was struck by the sheer immensity of the figures that I came across. They should really give everyone, even those that don’t smoke, pause for thought about the enormity of the toll that smoking is taking on American society every day. So stop for a moment and browse through some of these interesting little facts…

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2004, 20.9% of the population of the US was a current smoker. Thats approximately 44.5 million people. 44,500,000! That’s about twice the total population of Australia.

Now let’s make an assumption, and I know you will find it ridiculously understated, but lets just go with it for example’s sake: Lets assume that each of those smokers lit up only two cigarettes per day. If we do that we come up with some pretty startling figures about smoking…

• 89 million cigarettes are smoked every day.
• If you laid those smokes end to end lengthwise the result would be a white line of cigarettes over 29 million feet long. That’s roughly 80,556 football fields laid end to end.
• If you put those cigarettes into packs of twenty, you’d have 4,450,000 packs of cigarettes.
• If you stacked those packs one on top of the other, you’d have a tower of tobacco nearly 370 thousand feet tall. That’s about the equivalent of twelve Mt. Everests, stacked one on top of the other.
• If you were to pay for all those packs of cigarettes, it would cost you about $13,350,000.
• Remember, those figures are based on each smoker only lighting up 2 cigarettes per day. Can you even begin to fathom the reality of the impact smoking actually has?

By gender, 23.4% of men and 18.5% of women smoked. That’s pretty damn close to 1 in 4 men and 1 in 5 women.

Smoking is the number one cause of avoidable sickness and death in the United States. Approximately 440,000 people die every year due to causes related to smoking.

• That’s approximately 10% of the smoking population. Each year.

This accounts for roughly 5.6 million years of lost potential life per annum. That means the average smoker dies prematurely, on average, by about 13 years.

• That’s 4,745 days that go up in smoke.

The annual health-related economic cost of smoking is about $157 billion. Breaking that down, we have approximately:

• $75 billion in medical costs
• $81.9 billion in lost productivity
• $366 million in neonatal care!

About 90% of lung cancer deaths in men, and 80% in women are attributable to smoking.

• If you’re guy, you are about 2300% likelier than a non-smoker to get lung cancer. If you’re a woman, its 1800%.
• In 2003, approximately 157,200 people died from lung cancer. About 18 every hour. An estimated 171,900 new cases were recorded. Nearly 20 per hour.
• In the same year about 3,800 deaths occurred due to laryngeal cancer. Approximately ten per day.
• As well as an estimated 12,500 (one per hour) deaths from bladder cancer (and 57,400 new cases - roughly six per hour).
• Approximately 12,100 (one per hour) deaths annually are related to esophageal cancer, with an estimated 12,300 (also one per hour) new cases every year.
• Oral and pharynx cancers kill roughly 7,800 people annually (about 21 per day), with about 30,200 (or three per hour) new cases identified.

To be honest with you, the statistics on deaths resulting from diseases and illnesses that are caused by smoking goes on and on like a very expensive grocery bill. I may continue with more about diseases in follow up post, but until then I thought that it was important to at least cover the biggest avoidable killer of men and women in the United States.

If you have any interesting facts or figures about smoking, please share with me in the comments. I would love to hear them.