Statistics can be used for lots of different things. They can tell us a passer rating for our favorite NFL quarterback. They can explain the population dynamics in a metropolitan area. They can even tell us whether we should play the dealt hand in a Texas Hold'em game. But people also can abuse statistics to make an argument when there really isn't one.
But in the medical research community, statistics give us risk factor percentages and odds ratios for developing disease. In this post, I don't want to talk about any crazy p-values or confidence intervals. No, today I want to talk about smoking statistics. Here are a couple I came across when reading an article about hazard effect biomarkers for smoking.
First of all, this article can be found in the Toxicology and Industrial Health [2011:Mar 17 - Epub ahead of print] journal and is called "Circulating biomarkers of hazard effects from cigarette smoking" by Yuchuan, et al. In it they tell us that smoking leads to over 438,000 deaths annually in the United States. Basically, half a million people die each year because of a bad habit. I wonder if those 5 million people over the last decade ever thought that cigarettes would be the death of them?
Another smoking statistic the list is the annual cost of smoking on the US economy each year in lost productivity. The amount is crazy high, $92 BILLION. Okay, now imagine what our economy would be doing if everybody was able to show up to work on time and pump out the productivity. Also, imagine what our health care system would look like if we were able to save some of those copays and coinsurances. Not to mention all the hospital beds, tests, procedures, etc. that gets utilized because someone had to be admitted to the hospital for a smoking related illness.
Here's the last smoking statistic. Globally, in 2002, an average of 80-100,000 children start smoking each day. Did you ever wonder why smoking deaths don't wipe out the entire smoking population? The answer is simple, there's a new crop of smokers to take their place. It's a vicious cycle that simply doesn't end.
Do you think somebody ought to tell these children that smoking will kill them and cost them a lot of money? Do you think they'd listen? When you see statistics like this, it makes you wonder why tobacco isn't outlawed. Think about it, why is cocaine outlawed, because there is a criminal element associated with it right? The crime surrounding cocaine relates to health/death and money. Those are the same elements associated with tobacco use - just look at the above statistics.
Okay, I'll get off my soapbox now. As a respiratory therapist, I just hate to see people throwing their health and money away like that.
