Smokers Should Pay for Their Own Health Care Costs Incurred From Smoking Related Diseases

Smokers should pay for their own health costs.

Health care costs of smoking are expensive and smoking is reduced more to motivational determinants than to biological factors; the essay, therefore, recommends that smokers pay for their own health costs.

Smokers can abstain from smoking if they wish to. Self-efficacy is essential

"Analysis shows that the intention to stop smoking was dependent not only on the perceived health benefits but also on the subject's confidence that hey would succeed if they tried to stop… When the follow-up data are considered, reported attempts to quitting were strongly related to previously declared intentions " (Eiser et al., 1984, 321)

In a broadly quoted study that was conducted by Eiser and colleagues in 1984, researchers discovered that out of 1848 smokers surveyed, 797 had tried to stop smoking, 709 had reduced their consumption, and 164 had become abstinent. Analysis showed that success in quitting smoking was directly related to smoker's resolutions that they would do so and to smoker's belief that they would actually succeed in complete abstention.

(Smokers can therefore stop smoking if they are motivated and believe themselves able to)

2. Smoking may not be biological as claimed. Therefore smokers can abstain

"The relationship between smoking and psychiatric status may not be simply a biological one as several sociocultural and economic factors could influence smoking behavior…. As smoking is a leading cause of preventable morbidity and mortality, there is a serious need to review the neurobiological issue of smoking .. considering the influence culture and social practices could have upon the behavior." (Srinivasan & Tara, 2001, 68)

Addiction to smoking has been frequently attributed to biological causes and has, therefore, been said to be indeterminsitic and something that individuals cannot so readily stop without costly medical help. Srinivasan and Tara, (2001) found that patients could and did stop smoking if they wanted to and continuance of smoking was far more readily connected to socioeconomic and cultural factors than to anything else.

(Abstention form smoking is therefore more controllable than uncontrollable and depends on the smoker)

3. External Medical costs for smoking are expensive

The estimated lifetime external costs are:

$1,000 per smoker or a net external cost of 15 cents per pack of cigarettes at a 5% discount rate in 1986 U.S. dollars, not including costs imposed on family. This adjusts to $1,958 per smoker or a net external cost of 29 cents per pack of cigarettes in 2009 U.S. dollars. If the costs of maternal smoking and smoking-related fires were included, this estimate would range from 31 to 52 cents per pack in 1986 U.S. dollars ($0.61 to $1.02 in 2009 U.S. dollars) [11,12].

The average retail price of a pack of cigarettes was about $1 per pack in 1986 U.S. dollars ($1.96 in 2009 U.S. dollars). ( Zohrabian & Philipson, 2010, 2463)

Other costs incurred by smoking include medical expenses related to low-birth weight children as well as fetal malformation related to smoking and behavioral, developmental and other psychological interventions structured for children whose problems were created due to parent's smoking problems. The authors estimated these costs to come out to millions, if not billions, of dollars.