Quitting Smoking and Happiness

The FDA is proposing a new rule in regards to tobacco regulation. As detailed recently in the New York Times, the benefits of stopping smoking, such as less heart and lung disease, would need to be discounted 70%, making it that much harder to justify spending money on smoking cessation. It sounds like something inserted at the bequest of tobacco lobbyists. Tomorrow is the deadline to make a public comment. Here is what I submitted:

I think it’s a dire mistake to discount the economic and health benefits of stopping smoking because of the loss of enjoyment. Although smokers may get temporary enjoyment from smoking, they also get enjoyment from being healthy. Surely one gets more pleasure taking a walk in a park and living at home, than pushing an oxygen tank down a hall in a nursing home because of severe emphysema. Smokers die at a younger age than they otherwise would. What about the enjoyment their partners, children, and grandchildren lose when the smoker dies prematurely? Loss of enjoyment should not be part of the equation, unless it’s a negative number which would serve to magnify the cost smoking places on individuals and society.

Author: Daniel Ginsberg, MD, FACP

I'm an internal medicine physician and have avidly applied computers to medicine since 1986, when I wrote my first medically oriented computer programs. So yes, that means I'm at least 35-years-old! View all posts by Daniel Ginsberg, MD, FACP