Thanks to Surgeon General's Warning labels, public smoking bans, strict regulation of advertising, excise taxes, and public

service messages, nearly everyone in America is fully aware of the many health risks associated with cigarette smoking. Ongoing research has continuously proven that smoking causes lung dysfunction, cancer, SIDS, heart disease, birth defects, preterm birth, and other serious health problems. Knowing this, the idea that cigarette smoking may offer health benefits may seem utterly absurd. However, cigarette smoking has been confirmed to provide numerous benefits to the health of smokers. Surprisingly, the tobacco plant appears to have more to offer our bodies than a guarantee of certain death. Although the health benefits of smoking are far outweighed by the many very dire risks, tobacco may provide alternative relief or prevention for some diseases in certain individuals. The most fascinating and widely recognized health benefit of smoking is its ability to seemingly alleviate symptoms of mental illnesses, including anxiety and schizophrenia. According to an article published in 1995 in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, schizophrenics have much higher smoking rates than people with other mental illnesses, and appear to use it as a method of self-medicating. The article postulates that nicotine found in cigarettes reduces psychiatric, cognitive, sensory, and physical effects of schizophrenia, and also provides relief of common side effects from antipsychotic drugs. The treatment of schizophrenia isn't the only positive effect that nicotine has on the brain. A series of very interesting studies from multiple academic sources confirms that the risk of Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease is surprisingly higher in non-smokers than in smokers. Doctor Laura Fratiglioni of Huddinge University Hospital in Sweden states, "Cigarette smokers are 50% less likely to have PD or AD than are age- and gender-matched nonsmokers [...] cigarette smoking exerts an undefined, biologic, neuroprotective influence against the development of PD and AD." The University of Melbourne confirmed the claims made by many smokers that tobacco itself is a strong appetite suppressant, and many use it to self-treat compulsive overeating disorders or obesity. Many smokers experience weight loss and decreased appetite after they begin smoking, and the Melbourne study found similar results in lab rats and mice exposed to cigarette smoke. While tobacco-influenced pharmaceuticals may at some point be an available option to treat obesity, smoking as a self-treatment is very ill-advised, since the negative effects of tobacco and obesity tend to compound and create interrelated conditions. Cigarette smoking has also been linked to a decrease in risk of certain inflammatory disorders, since nicotine itself appears to be an anti-inflammatory agent. The department of gastroenterology at the University Hospital of Wales conducted a number of in-vitro studies to confirm and explain the decreased risk in ulcerative colitis (a potentially severe digestive disorder) in individuals who smoke cigarettes. Perhaps most shockingly, tobacco smoke's anti-inflammatory effects may actually provide some benefits to children who are exposed to secondhand smoke. While this is certainly not worth at-home experimentation, one astonishing study conducted in Sweden observed two generations of Swedish children and found that the children of smokers had lower rates of allergic rhinitis, allergic asthma, atopic eczema, and food allergies. The studied groups included 6909 adults and 4472 children, and the findings remained consistent, even when adjusted to reflect other variables. Other surprising academic findings reveal that tobacco may have a positive effect on pregnancy, although this, too, should not be left up to individual experimentation. A study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology revealed that preeclampsia, an extremely common but potentially deadly condition, is significantly less common in expectant mothers who smoke cigarettes than in expectant mothers who do not smoke. While it is undebated that tobacco cigarettes pose a number of deadly hazards to human health, they also reveal a surprising link to decreased mortality and morbidity for some conditions. While it may be interesting to note tobacco's few benefits, it is also critical for all consumers to recognize that its positive aspects are few compared to its many very serious risks. Even taking the health benefits of smoking into account, tobacco smokers can expect to live shorter lives and experience many chronic diseases. If you believe you have, or are at risk for, a medical condition that can be treated or prevented with tobacco use, do not use this as a reason to begin smoking or to avoid smoking cessation . However, talk to your doctor about pharmaceutical or botanical solutions that may yield similar benefits, without the risks associated with tobacco.

Emerging research may soon reveal an ability to synthesize and isolate the few positive chemicals in cigarettes and use them to manufacture new treatment options.

The bulk of jobs generated by the Tobacco Industry in the U.S. are in manufacturing (48,800 employed at 114 tobacco factories in 21 states) and farming (136,000 employed in 23 states).(1) Over the past decade and a half, however, even as cigarette production rose, both manufacturing and farming jobs have been lost. For example, the number of tobacco farms declined by 23% between 1985 and 1992.(2) The major contributors to job loss are not decreases in the number of smokers nor are they due to government mandated health measures. Rather, the major tobacco companies have been the major contributors to job loss by increasing mechanization, increasing their use of imported tobacco (from countries like Brazil, Mexico and Malawi) and moving manufacturing overseas. As such, farmers in traditional tobacco growing states have begun to call for government spending to help them diversify in their regions. Research indicates that reduced tobacco sales might even boost employment in nontobacco regions.(3) Finally, two-thirds (or 1.6 million) of the jobs which the Tobacco Institute says are dependent on tobacco are not actually in the tobacco industry. Tobacco Industry figures here include jobs of those who sell materials to the industry and those at the retail level for whom only a fraction of their business depends on tobacco.(2) According to researchers Kenneth E. Warner & George A. Fulton at the University of Michigan "the amount of economic activity associated with tobacco product sales would not disappear if consumers decrease their spending on tobacco products. Rather, it would be redistributed as consumers use the same money to purchase alternative goods and services. Just like spending on tobacco, this alternative spending would generate employment and tax revenues associated with the production, distribution and sale of purchased goods and services".(5) Even though the Tobacco Industry spends up to $6 billion a year on advertising and promotion, large tobacco companies can deduct up to 100% of the cost from a their tax bill in the U.S. Meanwhile, congress provides $40 million a year in tobacco tax subsidies and spends $250 million a year to counter tobacco advertising with anti-tobacco programs. In addition the Centers for Disease Control and the University of California estimated that in 1993 the health care cost of tobacco related disease was at least $50 billion, or $2.06 per pack, which exceeded the 56 cents tax revenue per pack earned as income in the U.S.(4) So, in the U.S. even though the Tobacco Industry is responsible for raising $11 billion in tax funds it still doesn't come close to paying for the government Medicare payments to cover tobacco-related illnesses which cost taxpayers $16 billion.(1)

The Economics of Tobacco Trade and the Impact on the Global Economy
In a paper about the global economic burden of tobacco, Howard Barnum, World Bank Senior Economist, factors in benefits of tobacco consumption to producers and consumers, costs of morbidity & mortality and indirect costs and concludes that the world tobacco market produces an annual global net loss of US$ 200 billion. He goes on to encourage developing countries to act now on tobacco control policies such as countering tobacco industry advertising and promotion activities and raising retail tobacco prices through excise taxes. A World Bank policy adopted in 1991 states, "The Bank does not lend for tobacco production, processing, imports, or marketing, whether for domestic consumption or for export."(6) He goes on to conclude, "this, then is the simple message. Tobacco consumption provides a net economic loss, and anti-tobacco policies are a costeffective way to save lives and benefit the economy. I hope you are convinced and will convey this message to your ministers of finance."(6) Even though almost every country in the world has regions or sectors within it which rely on the tobacco industry as an economic activity, most are categorized as non-tobacco countries, in that growing, manufacture, and export do not make up significant economic activities. The international tobacco industry uses economic analysis to persuade policy makers around the world to encourage "expansion or development of tobacco industry activity or, at a minimum, to avoid adopting policy measures that would discourage tobacco consumption."(7) Profits from selling foreign tobacco do not benefit the developing world but are instead returned to the shareholders in the West. The introduction of foreign cigarettes can cause loss of foreign exchange.(8) Tobacco Industry economic analyses are flawed in that they fail to account for activity such as health care costs to treat tobacco related illness and more importantly they consider resources devoted to tobacco production and distribution as disappearing if tobacco-related economic activity declines. According to Warner and Fulton, these analysis fail to consider that "if resources were not devoted to tobacco, they would be employed in other productive economic activities, themselves generating employment and tax revenues."(7) Furthermore, depending on a country's level of tobacco dependence, shifting spending from tobacco to other goods and services would either improve, maintain or have a "net economic impact" that would "be dramatically smaller than that suggested by the tobacco industry's estimates."(7) Until recently the U.S. Trade Representative used trade policy to force other countries to open their markets and remove bans on tobacco advertising and promotion. Mechanisms like these and other trade agreements such as the WTO, GATT, and NAFTA

agreements have proven among the most effective tools used by the tobacco industry to globalize tobacco and are among the greatest threats to the health and economies of countries around the world.