Thirty people living with serious illness for every smoking death

**Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable death and disease and
kills more than 480,000 Americans each year. More than 41,000 of these deaths
are the result of exposure to secondhand smoke** — people who did not smoke.

The death toll is the figure everyone quotes. This one is not:

**For every smoking-related death, at least 30 people live with a serious
smoking-related illness.**

That ratio turns 480,000 into **more than 14 million people currently living
with a serious illness caused by smoking** — which is the number that actually
describes what smoking does to a country, because most of its harm is not
death but decades of illness.

What those illnesses are

**Smoking causes immediate damage to your body, which can lead to long-term
illnesses or make existing illnesses worse:**

Asthma · Buerger's disease · Cancer · **Chronic obstructive
pulmonary disease (COPD)** · Diabetes · Gum disease · **Heart disease
and stroke** · Vision loss

Several of those are not the ones people expect. Diabetes, gum disease and
vision loss do not feature in anyone's mental picture of smoking harm, and
they are on the list.

The cost

Cigarette smoking cost the United States more than $600 billion in 2018:
more than $240 billion in healthcare spending and **nearly $372 billion in
lost productivity.**

Productivity loss is the larger share — which follows directly from the 30-to-1
ratio. Illness that does not kill still stops people working.

Where help is

Telephone, in five languages:

Text QUITNOW to 333888 (message and data rates may apply), or the
quitSTART app.

Web: CDC's Quit Smoking pages (also in Spanish), Smokefree.gov, and the
Asian Smokers' Quitline.

All of it is free.

*Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Tips From Former
Smokers®.*