West Virginia smokers cost the state between $1.8 billion and $2 billion a year in lost productivity and health care costs, says the latest statewide assessment on smoking.

 

     Overall, 27 percent of West Virginia adults smoked in 2003, compared to the national average of 22 percent, said the Department of Health and Human Resources in its updated report, Tobacco Is Killing (and Costing) Us.

 

      On average, 11 West Virginians die daily due to smoking-related illnesses. That amounts to 3,842 deaths a year.

 

      Overall nearly one in five (19 percent) deaths in the state from 1999-2003 was related to smoking, the agency said Thursday in a news release.

 

    Wirt County had the highest percentage of smoker-related deaths with 27 percent. Randolph County had the state's lowest with 13 percent.

    
      Health care costs related to treating smoking-related illnesses cost the state between $846 million to more than $1 billion in 2004. The Bureau for Public Health estimates smoking-related productivity losses cost another $1 billion.
 

     The economic costs did not include other forms of tobacco use such as chewing tobacco, cigars, pipes or second-hand smoke. (Copied from The Herald-Dispatch, July 11, 2005, page 2C.)
 

 

 The Bible is very plain concerning doing harm to the body (I Cor. 6:19,20). God would have one to refrain from what is doing harm to us physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Really - we come out losers when we disobey the Creator. He knows best. I have attended many funerals of those who have put themselves in the grave prematurely due to smoking. Let us learn from their mistakes.

 

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