The World Health Organization (WHO) says smoking's death toll for the century could reach 1 billion.
It has become almost too cliché to repeat: Smoking is hazardous to your health.
All of us know the litany of diseases associated with smoking: cancer, heart attacks, emphysema. This list barely scratches the surface, since smoking affects every organ system.
Many people also recognize the hazards of secondhand smoking, most of which mirror those of smoking.
But did you know that smoking is hazardous to the financial health of our nation's school systems?
Winston-Salem/Forsyth County School Board, in Winston-Salem, N.C., votes May 22 on whether this school system will go tobacco free, campuswide.
No smoking in the parking lots, in the football stadiums, at school events.
This system educates about 51,000 children, making it the fifth-largest school district in North Carolina and the 94th largest in the nation. There are 40 elementary schools, 15 middle schools and 11 high schools.
To put it mildly, this is an astounding place for a school board to consider a vote on smokefree schools, campuswide.
Tobacco money virtually built this town, which lent its name to Winston and Salem cigarettes. RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company is headquartered here, and generations of local residents have worked in the tobacco-related industry or agriculture in some form.
The town even acquired the sobriquet Camel City, after the popular brand of cigarettes. To paraphrase a common bumper sticker seen around North Carolina: Tobacco money pays our bills.
Even our school bills.
Amazing or not, though, it is imperative that the financial hazards of tobacco use be factored in to considerations of smokefree schools by school board members and taxpayers here and across the nation. This is because smoking-related costs to any school system are staggering. And that applies to school systems well-beyond tobacco land.
In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that one smoker loses 33 hours per year to illness --
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