Tobacco Use in the USA

Kids & Tobacco Use

• High school students who are current (past month) smokers: 23.0% or 3.5+ million (Boys: 22.9% Girls: 23.0%)

• High school males who currently use smokeless tobacco: 13.6% (Girls: 2.2%)

• Kids (under 18) who try smoking for the first time each day: 4,000+

• Kids (under 18) who become new regular, daily smokers each day: 1,000+

• Kids exposed to secondhand smoke at home: 15.5 million

• Packs of cigarettes consumed by kids each year: 800 million (roughly $2.0 billion per year in sales revenue)

Adults & Tobacco Use

• Adults in the USA who smoke: 20.9% or about 45 million (Men: 23.4% Women: 18.5%)

• Workplaces that have smoke-free policies: 68.6%

Deaths & Disease from Tobacco Use

• People who die each year from their own cigarette smoking: 400,000+

• People who die each year from others' smoking (secondhand smoke & pregnancy smoking): 38,000 to 67,500

• Kids under 18 alive today who will ultimately die from smoking (unless smoking rates decline): 6,000,000+

• People who currently suffer from smoking-caused illness: 8.6 million

• Smoking kills more people than alcohol, AIDS, car accidents, illegal drugs, murders, and suicides combined, with thousands more dying from spit tobacco use. Of the roughly 545,000 kids who become new regular, daily smokers each year, almost a third will ultimately die from it. In addition, smokers lose an average of 13 to 14 years of life because of their smoking

Tobacco-Related Monetary Costs

• Total annual public and private health care expenditures caused by smoking: $96.7 billion

• Annual Federal and state government smoking-caused Medicaid payments: $30.9 billion (Federal share: $17.6 billion per year. States share: $13.3 billion)

• Federal government smoking-caused Medicare expenditures each year: $27.4 billion

• Other federal government tobacco-caused healthcare costs (e.g. through VA health care): $9.6 billion

• Annual health care expenditures solely from secondhand smoke exposure: $4.98 billion

• Additional smoking-caused health costs caused by tobacco use include annual expenditures for health and developmental problems of infants and children caused by mothers smoking or being exposed to second-hand smoke during pregnancy or by kids being exposed to parents smoking after birth (at least $1.4 to $4.0 billion)

• Also not included above are costs from smokeless or spit tobacco use, adult secondhand smoke exposure, or pipe/cigar smoking

• Productivity losses caused by smoking each year: $97.6 billion (Only includes costs from productive work lives shortened by smoking-caused death. Not included: costs from smoking caused disability during work lives, smoking-caused sick days, or smoking-caused productivity declines when on the job)

• Annual expenditures through Social Security Survivors Insurance for the more than 300,000 kids who have lost at least one parent from a smoking-caused death: $2.6 billion

• Other non-healthcare costs from tobacco use include residential and commercial property losses from smoking-caused fires (about $400 million per year) and tobacco-related cleaning & maintenance ($4 billion, commercial only)

• Taxpayers yearly fed/state tax burden from smoking-caused government spending: $70.7 billion ($652 per household)

• Smoking-caused health costs and productivity losses per pack sold (low estimate): $10.28 per pack

• Annual tobacco industry spending on marketing its products nationwide: $15.4 billion ($42+ million each day), with most of it reaching children. So far this century: Over $118 billion and counting.

• Research studies have found that kids are three times as sensitive to tobacco advertising than adults and are more likely to be influenced to smoke by cigarette marketing than by peer pressure

• A third of underage experimentation with smoking is attributable to tobacco company advertising and promotion

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