evelopmental and intellectual delays (Prenatal, 1994, 1). These are only the term effects of alcohol consumption. The effects of smoking during pregnancy are not as well defined and clear to researchers as those of alcohol consumption during pregnancy. However, it is known that cigarette smoking during pregnancy does increase the risks of complications during childbirth. According to the Morbidity and Mortality Report (Medical, 1997, 1049), the costs of health care nationwide to cover the expense of such births is enormous, and these costs do not even take into consideration all of the additional health related costs that arise from the effects of cigarette smoking during pregnancy on the infant:
Updating the data to 1995, analysts calculate that complicated births among smokers accounted for $1.4 billion in medical expenditures, 11% of costs for such births. Moreover, the analyses underestimate the smoking-related costs of pregnancy and delivery because they do not take into account the costs involved in treating newborns for medical conditions stemming from their mothers’ smoking or indirect costs related to infant mortality and infant or maternal morbidity.
The American Journal of Public Health presents many studies that research the effects of prenatal behaviors in the short and long term. One recent study showed that the adolescent daughters of women who smoked during pregnancy were “more likely to smoke” than adolescents whose mothers did not smoke (Prenatal, 1994, 1). Yet, this result was not found to show up in boys of mothers who smoked during pregnancy. Researchers (Prenatal, 1994, 1) theorize that this may have something to do with the differences between male and female brains either from a structural or a hormonal difference.
The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) has conducted studies on smoking rates and smoking rates during pregnancy for years. The last major report released by the NCH...