Good health news tomorrow....
Today's post: Tuesday, 3-31-2009
There was a small news story recently; but that has truly huge value for protecting your health. So much so, it should have been front page news.
In the United States, starting tomorrow, there will be less cigarette smoke.
If you smoke it will become much easier to quit. If you smoke and make no effort to quit, you will likely smoke less at least.
And, whether or not you smoke, because many more people will quit successfully and those who smoke will smoke less, you will be exposed to less second hand smoke.
Why is that? And, how is it that this is a nationwide effect?
Here’s the small story. Tomorrow, 4-1-2009, the Federal Excise tax on cigarettes will go up by a dollar a pack.
Historically, price jumps of that magnitude have caused a significant number of smokers to quit. It makes it less likely that children and teens will start to smoke. And, although the people who still smoke may not cut back as much as it would pay them to do, most will smoke less.
Recently it was in the news that a community which banned smoking in public places had a quite significant reduction in heart attacks within the first 3 years they had that policy. This strongly suggests that not only does smoking cause heart disease, exposure to smoke whether you smoke or not, acts as a heart attack trigger.
When you combine less second hand smoke for everyone with fewer people smoking & those people smoking less, this means there will be many less heart attacks because of this tax increase.
(Unfortunately few smokers realize that every cigarette they smoke or is smoked near them is causing heart disease in them and is doing so for sure, right then, to them. ALL smokers get cardiovascular disease because they smoke. The good thing about this tax increase is that by them either quitting or smoking less, their risk of heart attack and the amount of cardiovascular disease they have will go down -- or stop getting worse so fast, even if they never learn why.)
Second, smoking causes between 30 and 50 % of all cancers by itself. So this large reduction in smoking will mean fewer cancers in less people will occur over the next 20 years than otherwise would have.
Third, by combining the new money going the US Treasury and reducing medical care costs by reducing the amount of cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, and cancers, this new tax will improve our economy significantly.
My hope is that the government makes this $1.00 a pack increase an annual event & that they also begin to tax the components of food and drink that cause harm to people’s health.
The government needs the money; but also needs to avoid taxing things that contribute value to the economy. So taxing things that harm people’s health does double duty. It gives the government money without taxing things that add value to the economy—AND it improves health and lowers health care costs at the same time.
So all this means that the new $1.00 a pack tax on cigarettes is very good news indeed.
Today's post: Tuesday, 3-31-2009
There was a small news story recently; but that has truly huge value for protecting your health. So much so, it should have been front page news.
In the United States, starting tomorrow, there will be less cigarette smoke.
If you smoke it will become much easier to quit. If you smoke and make no effort to quit, you will likely smoke less at least.
And, whether or not you smoke, because many more people will quit successfully and those who smoke will smoke less, you will be exposed to less second hand smoke.
Why is that? And, how is it that this is a nationwide effect?
Here’s the small story. Tomorrow, 4-1-2009, the Federal Excise tax on cigarettes will go up by a dollar a pack.
Historically, price jumps of that magnitude have caused a significant number of smokers to quit. It makes it less likely that children and teens will start to smoke. And, although the people who still smoke may not cut back as much as it would pay them to do, most will smoke less.
Recently it was in the news that a community which banned smoking in public places had a quite significant reduction in heart attacks within the first 3 years they had that policy. This strongly suggests that not only does smoking cause heart disease, exposure to smoke whether you smoke or not, acts as a heart attack trigger.
When you combine less second hand smoke for everyone with fewer people smoking & those people smoking less, this means there will be many less heart attacks because of this tax increase.
(Unfortunately few smokers realize that every cigarette they smoke or is smoked near them is causing heart disease in them and is doing so for sure, right then, to them. ALL smokers get cardiovascular disease because they smoke. The good thing about this tax increase is that by them either quitting or smoking less, their risk of heart attack and the amount of cardiovascular disease they have will go down -- or stop getting worse so fast, even if they never learn why.)
Second, smoking causes between 30 and 50 % of all cancers by itself. So this large reduction in smoking will mean fewer cancers in less people will occur over the next 20 years than otherwise would have.
Third, by combining the new money going the US Treasury and reducing medical care costs by reducing the amount of cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, and cancers, this new tax will improve our economy significantly.
My hope is that the government makes this $1.00 a pack increase an annual event & that they also begin to tax the components of food and drink that cause harm to people’s health.
The government needs the money; but also needs to avoid taxing things that contribute value to the economy. So taxing things that harm people’s health does double duty. It gives the government money without taxing things that add value to the economy—AND it improves health and lowers health care costs at the same time.
So all this means that the new $1.00 a pack tax on cigarettes is very good news indeed.
Labels: good health news, health policy, news in preventive medicine, prevent cancer, prevent heart attacks, protect your heart, quit smoking successfully, second hand smoke, smoking cessation
posted by David at 12:48 PM
1 Comments:
Correction.
The actual tx increase per pack is closer to 62 cents, from 39 cents to about $1.01.
Also, the cigarette companies have already begun raising prices in advance to minimize the jump buyers experience today.
The good news is that hotlines to help people quit smoking are already getting more than five times as many callers as they were. One source has estimated this tax increase will motivated a million smokers to try to quit.
Since some of these people will succeed, that could mean hundreds of thousands of people will no longer smoke. Even 100,000 will mean less second hand smoke. So that's great news.
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