Chris Murphy: “Also, it is related to, my understanding is yet so many other aspects come from this that you may find in such children…”

“Also, it is related to, my understanding is yet so many other aspects come from this that you may find in such children also eating disorders and diabetes and cancer risks even if that child never themselves smoked cigarettes. But the risks are huge. I believe a direct and indirect medical cost of smoking in this Nation is about $138 billion per year. Of course, another reason why I believe it is so important not only for the government but really for individuals and businesses to focus so much on helping to change that is the State of California, for example, estimates that their statewide tobacco prevention program during the 1990s resulted in overall cost savings of $8.4 billion in health care. That is pretty remarkable. Again, unfortunately, the way the Congress scores things with the Congressional Budget Office, when we talk about starting programs that would actually save money, my colleagues are aware of this, we never can get an accurate measure of what it actually saved because of the way the CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, scores things. It is not how much you save, but how much you spend. So if we would do similar things that would lead to a smoking cessation during pregnancy, and it might cost X number of dollars, the CBO would score that but never tell us how much money it would save over time. That is something that frustrates all of us because the things we are talking here tonight really require some expenditures to get these savings.…”