Smoking isn’t just a burden on people’s health: its a burden on the state.

According to the 2010 edition of “The Burden of Tobacco in Wisconsin,” nearly one million people in Wisconsin still smoke cigarettes. In 2007, an estimated $2.8 billion in health care expenses were paid in Wisconsin as a result of diseases caused by smoking, which translates into approximately $500 for every Wisconsin resident.

So not only are smokers exhaling carcinogens but they are also seemingly inhaling money. It is ridiculous how much attention we give these evil-doers, and how much advertising is targeted towards them and research is done involving them.

Take, for instance, a recent study at UW-Madison conducted by the Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention, led by Dr. Megan Piper. The study consisted of 1504 daily smokers that were interviewed for anxiety symptoms. Previous studies had shown an outstanding prevalence of depression in smokers, and Piper wanted to know if there was a similar link between anxiety and nicotine dependence.

The result of this study? There is practically no difference in starting age and cigarettes smoked per day between people who have symptoms of anxiety and people who don’t, but those with symptoms exhibit a noteworthy decreased ability to quit (of at least 5 percent).

Congratulations, smokers. You have managed to convince people that there is possibly a rooted issue to your smoking addiction. Now I am sure you are on the edge of your seat waiting for a prescription for Zoloft, Valium or Prozac.

Having been an on-and-off smoker myself since age 15, I could draw up afflicting symptoms of anxiety if I wanted to – “I have panic attacks, I feel overwhelmed, I am so agitated…” – all to justify my nicotine fix. And these reasons are usually why I have gone back to smoking in the seven years since I have started.

I acknowledge it is a self-inflicting impetus. I have gone back to smoking because I have been severely stressed out, but then I become more stressed out because I had gone back to smoking. I hate the smell, I hate the taste – I hate almost everything about it. So does everyone else I know who smokes. But in a malignantly glorious way, it allows us smokers to excuse ourselves from the world to marinate in a pool of stress. “Hey world, she is stressed out right now, let her be!” screams the cigarette.

Therefore, to me, but perhaps not to the psychologists, doctors and researchers who may not have been exposed to the bittersweet glory of cigarettes, it is pretty obvious why people with so-called symptoms of anxiety have a more difficult time quitting and why a more difficult time quitting may result in so-called symptoms of anxiety (What came first – the anxiety or the cigarette?).

I think such a finding as produced from Piper’s study hardly warrants a headline. It just gives smokers unnecessary publicity and justification for their inability to quit. Moreover, it allows an already overprescribed nation to become even more dependent on prescription drugs. And this just means more money puffed out of the state pocket and into the lungs of smokers.

Already, there is significant coverage for pharmacotherapy and cessation counseling. In a survey conducted in 2004 by CTRI, 74 percent of health plans offer coverage for at least one type of cessation pharmacotherapy (things like Zyban, the patch and Nicotine gum) and 62 percent offer coverage for at least one type of cessation counseling.

These days, when people smoke a cigarette, they are throwing up a middle finger to the world. When everyone else responds back with a huge spotlight, it just fuels the fire to the cigarette. By justifying that a smoking addiction may be cured with brain-altering meds, we might as well just start throwing money at smokers and bow down to them in passing.

So I suggest that rather than showering smokers with publicity and tender loving care, we turn the spotlight over to non-smokers to give them the reward that they, and not smokers, are actually deserving of.

Hey, residents of Wisconsin, thank you for not smoking – here’s $500!

Victoria Yakovleva ([email protected]) is a fifth year chemical engineering student.