Up In Smoke

In the current economy, everyone’s looking for tips on how to save some cash. Here’s a no-brainer for smokers: quitting that pack-a-day habit could put more than $2,300 a year back into your paycheck!

As part of the American Cancer Society’s annual Great American Smokeout campaign, smokers can go to www.cancer.org/livefreesmokefree to calculate how much money can be saved today as well as earned for tomorrow if they invest their cigarette money instead of letting it literally burn a hole in their pocket. Even if $2,300 doesn’t seem significant, consider that investing your cigarette money instead of smoking for the next five years could increase your spending money by more than $12,500. Being smoke-free for 25 years not only increases your life expectancy, it also increases your spending money to more than $87,000.*

“It’s really staggering,” added Sheila Williamson, regional vice president for the American Cancer Society. “When you look what you could earn by putting the money from those cigarettes into a simple investment, over time it starts to look like a retirement account. Just imagine how much good you could do if you invested some of that cigarette money towards finding a cure for cancer.

The Web site also provides quit tips, and facts about lung cancer, and a chance to win a “Kiss Me I Don’t Smoke” t-shirt. It even has an option for smokers to donate to the American Cancer Society’s cancer education, research, advocacy and patient and family services programs.

Tobacco use still remains the number one preventable cause of cancer here and around the world. Each year smoking causes 440,000 premature deaths in the United States, while secondhand smoke claims another 35,000 - 40,000 lives.

The American Cancer Society’s Great American Smokeout grew out of a 1971 event in Randolph, Mass., in which Arthur P. Mullaney asked people to give up cigarettes for a day and donate the money they would have spent on cigarettes to a high school scholarship fund. In 1974, Lynn R. Smith, editor of the Monticello Times in Minnesota, spearheaded the state’s first D-Day, or Don’t Smoke Day. The idea caught on, and on November 18, 1976, the California Division of the American Cancer Society succeeded in getting nearly one million smokers to quit for the day. That California event marked the first Smokeout, and it went nationwide in 1977.

For more information about how to get involved in the Great American Smoke Out, or for help quitting, call 1-800-ACS-2345 or visit www.cancer.org/livefreesmokefree.

* Above calculations provided by Needham & Company, LLC, a privately held, full-service investment bank. Calculations assume consumption and purchase of one pack of cigarettes per day at $7.15 per pack (New York) $6.45 per pack (New Jersey) and interest based on 3.0 % Annual Percentage Rate (APR), compounded on a daily basis.

The American Cancer Society is dedicated to eliminating cancer as a major health problem by saving lives, diminishing suffering and preventing cancer through research, education, advocacy and service. The American Cancer Society Eastern Division has 46 community-based offices, involving thousands of volunteers throughout NY and NJ. For 24-hour cancer information, call toll free 1-800-ACS-2345 or visit www.cancer.org/nynj.

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Author: Press Release