Fact Sheet

   State Cigarette Excise Tax Rats & Rankings

TOLL OF TOBACCO IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Tobacco Use in the USA

• High school students who are current (past month) smokers: 20.0% or 3.5 million [Boys: 21.3% Girls: 18.7%]
• High school males who currently use smokeless tobacco: 13.4% [Girls: 2.3%]
• Kids (under 18) who try smoking for the first time each day: 3,500+
• Kids (under 18) who become new regular, daily smokers each day: 1,000+
• Kids exposed to secondhand smoke at home: 15.5 million
• Workplaces that have smoke-free policies: 68.6%
• Packs of cigarettes consumed by kids each year: 800 million (roughly $2.0 billion per year in sales revenue)
• Adults in the USA who smoke: 19.8% or more than 43 million [Men: 22.3% Women: 17.4%]

Deaths & Disease in the USA from Tobacco Use

• People who die each year from their own cigarette smoking: approx. 438 K
• Adult nonsmokers who die each year from exposure to secondhand smoke: approx. 53K
• Kids under 18 alive today who will ultimately die from smoking (unless smoking rates decline): 6,000,000+
• People in the USA 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 400,000 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 in the USA

Total annual public and private health care expenditures caused by smoking: $96 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 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 half a billion dollars per year) and tobacco-related cleaning & maintenance ($3 billion).

• Taxpayers yearly fed/state tax burden from smoking-caused gov't spending: $70.7
  billion ($630 per household)

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

• Average retail price per pack in the USA (including sales tax): $4.20

Tobacco Industry Advertising & Political Influence

• Annual tobacco industry spending on marketing its products nationwide: $13.4 billion
  ($36+ million each day)

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; and that a third of underage experimentation with smoking is attributable to tobacco company advertising and promotion.

• Annual tobacco industry contributions to federal candidates, political parties, and
  PACS: Over $3 million

• Annual tobacco industry expenditures lobbying Congress: Over $20 million

Tobacco companies also spend enormous amounts to influence state and local politics; and, when threatened by the federal McCain tobacco control bill in 1998, spent more than $125 million in direct and grassroots lobbying to defeat it. Since 1998, Altria (Philip Morris) has spent more on lobbing Congress than any other business.

Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, December 8, 2008 / Eric Lindblom

Sources of Information for Tobacco's Toll in the USA
Youth tobacco use. 2007 National Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS). The 2006 National Youth Tobacco Survey (YTS), with a different methodology than the YTS, found that 19.7% of U.S. high school kids smoke and 13.4% of high school males use spit tobacco, but the results from the YRBS and YTS cannot be compared because they use different methodologies. Current smoker defined as having smoked in the past month. YRBS is done in odd- numbered years, YTS in even. See, also, Inst. for Social Research, Univ. of Mich., Monitoring the Future Studies, http://monitoringthefuture.org/new.html. Youth initiation. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services (HHS), "Results from the 2007 National Survey on Drug Use and Health," 2008. http://www.oas.samhsa.gov. Secondhand smoke exposure. CDC, "State-Specific Prevalence of Cigarette Smoking Among Adults, and Children's and Adolescents' Exposure to Environmental Tobacco Smoke — United States 1996," MMWR 46(44): 1038-1043, November 7, 1997. Good data not currently available re adult exposure to secondhand smoke at home or the numbers of adults or kids exposed to SHS outside the home. Smoke-free workplaces. Shopland, D., et al., "State-Specific Trends in Smoke-Free Workplace Policy Coverage: The Current Population Survey Tobacco Use Supplement, 1993 to 1999," Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine 43(8): 680-86, August 2001. Packs consumed by kids. J. DiFranza & J. Librett, "State and Federal Revenues from Tobacco Consumed by Minors," American Journal of Public Health 89(7): 1106-1108, July 1999; Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Tobacco Briefing Room, Table 8, http://www.econ.ag.gov/Briefing/tobacco/. See, also, Cummings, et al., "The Illegal Sale of Cigarettes to US Minors: Estimates by State," American Journal of Public Health 84(2): 300-302, February 1994. Adult smoking. National Center for Health Statistics, 2007 Nat'l Health Interview Survey. Smoking deaths. CDC, "Annual Smoking-Attributable Mortality, Years of Potential Life Lost, and Productivity Losses -- United States 2000-2004," MMWR 57(45), November 14, 2008 http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5745a3.htm. See also, California EPA, Proposed Identification of Environmental Tobacco Smoke as a Toxic Air Contaminant, June 24, 2005, http://repositories.cdlib.org/tc/surveys/CALEPA2005C/. Smoking-caused disease. CDC, "Cigarette Smoking-Attributable Morbidity — United States, 2000" MMWR 52(35): 842-844, September 5, 2003. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/PDF/wk/mm5235.pdf. See, also, U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO), "CDC's April 2002 Report on Smoking: Estimates of Selected Health Consequences of Cigarette Smoking Were Reasonable," letter to U.S. Rep. Richard Burr, July 16, 2003, http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d03942r.pdf.

Smoking-caused costs: CDC, "Annual Smoking-Attributable Mortality, Years of Potential Life Lost, and Productivity Losses -- United States 2000-2004," MMWR 57(45), November 14, 2008. See also, CDC, Sustaining State Programs for Tobacco Control: Data Highlights 2006 [and underlying CDC data and estimates], http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/state_data/data_highlights/2006/index.htm. Zhang, X., et al., "Cost of Smoking to the Medicare Program, 1993," Health Care Financing Review 20(4): 1-19, Summer 1999 [nationwide smoking-caused health costs = $89 billion in 1997 or $108 billion in 2002 dollars]. Health Care Financing Administration [federal gov't reimburses the states, on average, for 57% of their Medicaid expenditures]. Office of Management and Budget, The Budget for the United States Government - Fiscal Year 2000, Table S-8 at page 378, January 1999. CDC's Data Highlights 2006 provides cost estimates that have been adjusted for inflation and put in 2004 dollars. To make the other cost data similarly current and more comparable, they have also been adjusted for inflation and put in 2004 dollars, using the same CDC methodology. Pregnancy-related costs. Adams, E.K. & C.L. Melvin, "Costs of Maternal Conditions Attributable to Smoking During Pregnancy," American Journal of Preventive Medicine 15(3): 212-19, October 1998; CDC, "Medical Care Expenditures Attributable to Cigarette Smoking During Pregnancy," MMWR 46(44), November 7, 1997; Aligne, C.A. & J.J. Stoddard, "Tobacco and Children: An Economic Evaluation of the Medical Effects of Parental Smoking," Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, 151: 648-653, July 1997. Stoddard, JJ & B. Gray, "Maternal Smoking and Medical Expenditures for Childhood Respiratory Illness," American Journal of Public Health 87(2): 205-209, February 1997. SHS Costs. Behan, DF et al., Economic Effects of Environmental Tobacco Smoke, Society of Actuaries, March 31, 2005, http://www.soa.org/files/pdf/ETSReportFinalDraft(Final%203).pdf. Smoking & SSSI costs: Leistikow, B., et al., "Estimates of Smoking-Attributable Deaths at Ages 15-54, Motherless or Fatherless Youths, and Resulting Social Security Costs in the United States in 1994," Preventive Medicine 30(5): 353-360, May 2000 [put in 2004 dollars]. Fire costs. J. R. Hall, Jr., National Fire Protection Association, The Smoking-Material Fire Problem, November 2007, http://www.nfpa.org/assets/files//PDF/OS.SmokingMaterials.pdf; U.S. Fire Administration/National Fire Data Center, U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Residential Smoking Fires and Casualties, Topical Fire Research Series 5(5), June 2005, http://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/tfrs/v5i5.pdf. Cleaning and maintenance costs. D. Mudarri, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Costs and Benefits of Smoking Restrictions: An Assessment of the Smoke-Free Environment Act of 1993 (H.R. 3434), submitted to Subcommittee on Health and the Environment; Energy and Commerce Committee, U.S. House of Representatives, April 1994. CDC, Making Your Workplace Smokefree: A Decision Maker's Guide, 1996. Other non-health costs. U.S. Dept. of the Treasury, Economic Costs of Smoking in the U.S. and the Benefits of Comprehensive Tobacco Legislation, 1998; Chaloupka, F.J. & K.E. Warner, "The Economics of Smoking," in Culyer, A. & J. Newhouse (eds), The Handbook of Health Economics, 2000; CDC, MMWR 46(44), November 7, 1997. Tobacco tax burden. Smoking-caused federal/state tax burden equals listed government expenditures plus 3% of total tobacco-caused health costs to account for unlisted federal/state smoking costs. CDC, "Medical Care Expenditures Attributable to Smoking -- United States, 1993," MMWR 43(26): 1-4, July 8, 1994. Average retail price per pack. Orzechowski & Walker, The Tax Burden on Tobacco, 2007, and media reports.

Tobacco marketing. U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Cigarette Report for 2004 and 2005, 2007 [data for top five manufacturers only], http://www.ftc.gov/reports/tobacco/2007cigarette2004-2005.pdf; FTC, Federal Trade Commission Smokeless Tobacco Report for the Years 2004 and 2005, 2007 http://www.ftc.gov/reports/tobacco/0205smokeless0623105.pdf [top five manufacturers]. See, also Campaign fact sheet, Increased Cigarette Company Marketing Since the Multistate Settlement Agreement Went into Effect. Tobacco marketing studies. R. Pollay, et al., "The Last Straw? Cigarette Advertising and Realized Market Shares Among Youths and Adults," Journal of Marketing 60(2):1-16, April 1996. N. Evans, et al., "Influence of Tobacco Marketing and Exposure to Smokers on Adolescent Susceptibility to Smoking," Journal of the National Cancer Institute 87(20): 1538-45, October 1995. J.P. Pierce et al., "Tobacco Industry Promotion of Cigarettes and Adolescent Smoking," Journal of the American Medical Association 279(7): 511- 505, February 1998 [with erratum in JAMA 280(5): 422, August 1998]. Tobacco industry political contributions, lobbying, political advertising. Federal Election Commission. Common Cause, http://www.commoncause.org. Public Citizen, http://www.citizen.org/tobacco. Center for Responsive Politics, http://www.opensecrets.org. Torry, S. & N. Abse, "Big Tobacco Spends Top Dollar to Lobby," Washington Post, April 9, 1999. Jamieson, K., "Tax and Spend" vs. "Little Kids": Advocacy and Accuracy in the Tobacco Settlement Ads of 1997-8, Annenberg Public Policy Center, Univ. of Penn., August 6, 1998. Media reports. TFK website, http://tobaccofreekids.org/reports/contributions. Center for Public Integrity, http://www.publicintegrity.org.

Other major source of State tobacco-related data: CDC, state-specific tobacco information, http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/statehi/statehi.htm. All CDC MMWR's at http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr. Abstracts of many of the cited articles at PubMed, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez. Related Campaign Fact Sheets, available at http://www.tobaccofreekids.org or http://tobaccofreekids.org/research/factsheets.