What with the poor economy, layoffs, and the additional federal tax hike that became effective April 1, 2009, smoking is an increasingly expensive habit. If you can learn to quit smoking now, you’ll be saving more than just the daily cost of your smoking habit. Did you know that the health care costs associated with smoking are estimated to be $100 billion per year (it was only $50 billion in the early 1990s!)? Since health care is such a widely-debated subject right now, think of the money we could collectively be saving if smokers were able to stop smoking now. Additionally, our economy would strengthen as the collective GNP would rise, because smokers’ lost productivity equals $98 billion each year. This combined $200,000 billion savings is nothing to cough at!

Speaking of health-care costs, there’s new information regarding the illnesses that smoking causes, other than the typical cancers, lung and heart diseases that kill roughly 400,000 Americans each year. These diseases can affect your day-to-day enjoyment of life, unlike those diseases that develop due to the accumulation of years spent smoking. Don’t blame the fact that you’re getting older for the memory lapses and fogginess you might be experiencing. The loss of that once-agile mind you used to have is most likely to be blamed on smoking. Middle-age smoking is now associated with memory problems and a decline in reasoning abilities. Research also shows that people who experience mild impairment during midlife will hasten the development of dementia later on in life as compared to nonsmokers. In addition, a smoker’s chance of developing type 2 diabetes increases 44% as compared to nonsmokers. Not only is this cause for losing sleep, but smokers receive four times less of the restorative sleep our bodies need than do those who have never smoked.

Then there’s the list of problems caused by smoking that affects the genders. Whereas male smokers are more likely to suffer from erectile dysfunction, women smokers will be concerned to know that smoking can prematurely cause facial wrinkles (as well as other places). Not only do women smokers risk infertility and other reproductive problems, smoking may also hasten the onset of menopause.

Smokers who try to quit smoking cold turkey have a 5% success rate with each attempt. With self-help quit smoking aids, your success rate doubles to 10%. When you choose either counseling or nicotine replacement therapy (nicotine patch, nicotine gum or a stop smoking shot), the success rate again doubles to 20%. If you combine the counseling and/or group therapy with one of the nicotine replacements, your success rate increases to 30%. Although many people try and fail to quit smoking now, don’t let that be a deterrent; keep on trying. You will have to work at this, much like you have to work for any goal worth achieving.