May 13, 2010

Report: Smoking kills 246 Racine County residents per year

An estimated 246 people in Racine County die every year from smoking, according to a report from the University of Wisconsin Medical School released this week. 

The 2010 Burden of Tobacco in Wisconsin report estimated smoking cost Racine County residents 3,420 years of life and $160 million in health care costs and lost productivity.

Smoking-related deaths make up 16 percent of all death in Racine County, according to the report, which was prepared by UW's Tobacco Surveillance and Evaluation Program. 

The economic impact in Racine County included $99.1 million in health care costs paid for smoking-related diseases and $61.1 million in productivity costs due to sickness or premature death. 

It also noted Racine County residents spent $66.3 million on 16.2 million packs of cigarettes in 2008. 

In 2007, smoking cost every Racine County resident, on average, $498.

Statewide, an average of 7,717 people die annually from direct and indirect smoking, according to the report. The smoking-related deaths account for 15 percent of all deaths in the state.

The report estimated people lost 94,500 years of life from smoking and cost the state $4.5 billion in health care expenses and lost productivity. State residents purchased 374 million packs of cigarettes in 2008, according to the report.

9 comments:

  1. What will Delagrave do?

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  2. What!?! This post has been on here since 9am and nobody has tried to blame this problem on the Mayor!?!?

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  3. I bet this doesn't include the children of smokers who suffer life long chronic illness. As one who suffers from the smoking of my parents when I was young I hope parents wake up to what they are doing to their children.

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  4. How many deaths are reported due to obesity and hypertension? The goverment continues to report smkoing related deaths yet does nothing to ban the sale and distribution of tobacco but raise teh tax rate. Now the govenment wishes to tax my soft drinks and restrict my access to salt.

    I do not smoke - and my BP is 98/58 all the while of salting my french fries.

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  5. Bob, only about 25% of hypertensive patients are salt sensitive. Just FYI :) My BP is low like yours and I enjoy my salt as well.

    HOWEVER...I do wholeheartedly agree with taxing foods which do not contain any nutritional value. They are not necessary and do cause harm. We need money. I see no problem with it. I think fast food should also be taxed. And while were at it...make pot legal and tax the hell outta that too!!

    JMHO :)

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  6. Take your lefty, nanny-state hands off of anything I choose to put in my mouth, you pot-smoking liberal.

    This is a free country, last time I checked. Sugar and flour and oil seem to be basic food products used in cooking and baking, and have been for centuries. So keep your damn hands off of them, even if they are ingredients in Twinkies and fries. They're also ingredients in basic, healthy foods too.

    Don't you have anything better to worry about? People are fat because they don't exercize, watch too much TV, spend too much time in front of their computers, and now seem to think all communication needs to be done on a handheld device.

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  7. Why are the numbers always 'estimates' and who does the number collecting? For instance, in every traffic accident report sent to the state there is a block to check for alcohol. This block is checked if anyone involved has been drinking, including passengers. So when the states estimated the number of alcohol related traffic crashes the numbers can be misleading.

    Also can we 'estimate' how much the states collected in taxes?

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  8. I know smoking is bad for us, we all know this by now, but I would like for the people whom put this report out to at least show us a minimal of
    120 of the 246 death certificates that state the people died from smoking cigarettes. I say this because I have had many people in my family die of lung disease and not a one of them were smokers or worked with smokers so I want to see the death certificates not the made up numbers to try and scare everyone!!

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  9. Did you forget to count the number of smokers who go 'across the border' to purchase their smokes. No Wisconsin tax dollars there!

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