The diseases connected to smoking are a big problem. Doctors think that the
annual medical cost for lung cancer, heart disease, and other illnesses connected to
smoking is between 12 and 35 million pounds.
And smokingg costs society money in other ways. Between 27 and 61 billion
pounds are spent each year on sick days when people don't go to work, on wages that
you don't get when you don't go to work, and on work lost at the company when you
are sick.
This money counts the wages from people who die of cancer at young age and
stop paying taxes. This does not count fires started by cigarettes, which kill fifteen
hundred people yearly and injure another four thousand. Smoking costs every man,
woman and child in the UK from one hundred and ten to two hundred and fifty
pounds each year in the lost work and wages. When you add another fifty to one
hundred and fifty pounds yearly in insurance cost, that comes to one hundred and
sixty to four hundred and ten pounds. If everyone stopped smoking. a family of four
could have up to one thousand six hundred and forty pounds a year more.
Smoking will also cause other problems. People who don't smoke will live
longer, and so they will take money from the government when they are old. But they
will also work for more years 'and pay more taxes.
In the end, the value of a non-smoking nation is not in pounds. The good health
of the people is the true value for us all.
1. What would happen if everybody stopped smoking?
2. What do companies lose every year because of smoking?
3. If everyone stopped smoking, how much more could a family of four save each year?
4. What is the true value of not smoking?
5. Choose the best title for the passage:
A. taxes which are not paid by smokers
B. diseases that smokers get
C. how much smoking costs the UK
D. how much the UK would get if everyone stopped smoking
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