Tobacco use in the United States results in over 480,000 deaths per year—a greater toll in human life than that exacted by car accidents, suicides, drug and alcohol use, murders, and HIV/AIDS combined.
In monetary terms, tobacco use results in over $96 billion in public and private health care costs each year, and reduces the productivity of Americans by $97 billion per year. If current trends go unchecked, American taxpayers will continue to pay on a yearly basis more than $500 per household to finance the social costs of tobacco use, and more than 6 million people now under the age of 18 will die from the effects of tobacco.
In Virginia alone, people spend more than $1.5 billion on tobacco-use-related health care, and over 9,000 people die each year from tobacco-use-related illnesses. Once people become dependent on tobacco, they usually find it extremely difficult to quit, because the nicotine that tobacco delivers to the body is one of the most addictive substances known. To curtail tobacco’s enormous and tragic burden on our public health and welfare, it is essential that we find more reliable ways to help people quit smoking, and more importantly, to prevent young people from becoming tobacco users in the first place.
Fortunately, the Commonwealth of Virginia has wisely shouldered the responsibility to seek solutions by establishing a formidable base of scientific research and evaluation on tobacco addiction and prevention, and by allocating a portion of its proceeds from the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) with tobacco product manufacturers to tobacco-use prevention initiatives. Funded by the MSA, the Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth (VFHY) sponsors numerous initiatives, including research on the etiology and prevention of youth tobacco use.