Letting
numbers speak for a cause helps a lot. Here are some of my favorite
sound bites of social math -- the art of making numbers prove your point.
Zoinks!...Hack!
The tobacco
industry must attract 208 young people per hour to replace
the smokers
who quit or die each year.
Tobacco
kills more Americans each year than alcohol, cocaine, heroin, homicide,
suicide,
fires,
car accidents and AIDS combined.
That's
over 400,000 people - enough to fill the Oakland Coliseum every night for
a week.
China accounts
for at least 300 million smokers.
One in
3 of the world's cigarettes is smoked there.
An ounce
of prevention...what is it worth?
An average
of 11,000 new cases of HIV would have been prevented if a national needle
exchange program had existed between 1987 - 1997.
That's
3 cases of HIV prevented each day for ten years.
In San
Francisco, there is one police officer for every 18 young people
and only
one school counselor for every 500 kids.
For the
cost of incarcerating one prisoner for one year,
California
could send two students to the University of California,
three
students to a California state university
or seven
students to a community college.
Motor vehicles
are currently responsible for 40% of air pollutant emissions nationwide;
this is
increasing as the number of cars and miles per capita increases.
This one
is for everyone who feels entitled to complain about the rising cost of
gas....
The true
price of gasoline,
taking
into account the full environmental, social, military and other costs involved
is estimated
at between $5 - $16 per gallon.