Smoking

Smoking • Nearly one out of every four Medicare dollars spent on hospital care is due to substance abuse -- totalling $20 billion out of the $87 billion spent on such care in fiscal year 1994. Eighty percent of that -- $16 billion -- paid for care for smoking-related disease and disabilities. • Cigarette smoking is the largest single drain on the Medicare Trust Fund, poised to take $800 billion over the next 20 years, according to a study of hospital records and epidemiological studies. • Only 11 percent of those polled said they felt tobacco companies told the entire truth about health issues. Forty-five percent said they felt they were mostly truthful but were hiding something, and 38 percent said the companies were mostly lying. • In 1990, 7,993 deaths in Washington state were tobacco-related. This is compared to 3,024 deaths caused by automobile accidents, suicides, alcohol, AIDS, drugs, homicides, and fires combined. • Lung Cancer is the state\'s leading cause of cancer deaths for both men and women. In 1988, over 81 percent - 1,984 of the total 2,444 lung cancer deaths were caused by cigarette smoking. • In 1988, Washington state citizens had smoking, percent, deaths, cancer, after, risk, heart, disease, million, means, giving, monoxide, health, carbon, billion, years, year, tobacco, levels, costs, caused, nicotine, lung, cigarettes, cigarette, body, blood, about, washington, state, said, reduce, rate, lower