Calculating 50-year tobacco-related death toll – 2/28/12

Q: We are being asked for the number of tobacco (or smoking) related deaths in Michigan for the last 50 years, and have not been able to find a source for this information. Does anyone know where a state-specific estimate can be found, or have a model for calculating a relatively accurate estimate without a massive investment of time and resources? If so, please share your data source or methodology.

A:

1. North Dakota: The only thing that comes to mind is the SAMMEC website. The annual average deaths attributable to cigarette smoking could be very useful for Michigan’s purposes. Maybe they could start with those and then apply some modifiers to obtain estimates going back 50 years.
    
   The SAMMEC website has done much of the legwork in developing logical, justifiable estimates of smoking-attributable deaths for each state. Or simply using the annual average smoking-attributable deaths for the state of Michigan, in this case, may be the best bet.
    
2. Washington: All we have is the last year’s deaths. Our burden fact sheet can be found here.
    
3. West Virginia: We aren’t aware of a resource or tool (nor of one that will not take time and resources) to calculate a 50-year tobacco-related death toll.
    
   See attached report and summary of Tobacco is Killing and Costing Us – 2009 which is our burden report for tobacco in West Virginia. The methodology for obtaining smoking-attributable mortality, morbidity, and economic costs (SAMMEC) can be found starting on page 33 (in Appendix B).

Back to Table of Contents