Smoking Increases Medical Problems of Broken Bones

Two Findings Highlight Hidden Health Care Costs of Cigarettes

Florida to Join 3 Other States Tuesday in Suing to Recover Them

Smoking almost doubles the time it takes broken bones to heal, in some cases preventing recovery for over a year, says a new study at the University of Texas Medical School. Another study at Emory University School of Medicine shows that nicotine in the blood also slows and may even totally prevent bone fusion in spinal fusion surgery. Both illustrate some of the many hidden and usually overlooked costs of smoking, says Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), a national antismoking organization.

Although the average of four major studies designed to estimate the costs of smoking is over $95 billion a year in 1994 dollars, these studies seriously underestimate the true costs for many reasons, claims ASH. One is illustrated by the new bone studies. "Typically studies of the costs of smoking look at the costs of the three major disease categories caused by smoking cancers at various sites, cardiovascular problems (including heart attacks and strokes), and chronic obstructive lung disease ("C.O.L.D.," especially chronic bronchitis and emphysema) and then estimate the percentage of each caused by smoking," says ASH Executive Director John Banzhaf. "However, they overlook medical reports like the two new bone studies which suggest that smoking exacerbates health care and rehabilitative costs for many problems not directly caused by smoking." For example, he says, it has long been known that smokers undergoing surgical operations for many different problems including those like broken bones not caused by smoking spend far more time in recovering in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). They are also far more likely to suffer complications especially respiratory complications from their surgery than nonsmokers.

Finally, as with bone healing, they spend far more time on the average recovering. All of this increases the medical-care, time-lost-from-work, and rehabilitative costs, even for many problems not directly caused by smoking, and therefore generally not included in the calculations of smoking's costs. Using $100 billion a year as an estimate of the cost of smoking to the American economy is also very conservative, says ASH, because it does not include other expenses like the health problems smoke causes to nonsmokers, cigarette-caused fires, damages caused by cigarettes, etc. On Tuesday, Florida will join Mississippi, Minnesota, and West Virginia in suing the major cigarette manufacturers in an effort to recover the excess Medicaid and other costs they are forced to pay as a result of smoking.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Monday, February 20, 1995

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CALL: John Banzhaf (202) 659-4310

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