LEWISTON, ID – Smoking costs Americans more than $600 billion per year, and the personal finance website WalletHub today released its report on The Real Cost of Smoking by State, as well as expert commentary, to help encourage the 46 million tobacco users in the U.S. to kick this dangerous and expensive habit.
Smoking will cost the average Washington State resident more than $4.5 million, while in Idaho, it will cost smokers just over $3.3 million, WalletHub has found.
WalletHub calculated the potential monetary losses brought on by smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke, including the lifetime and annual costs of a pack of cigarettes per day, health care expenditures, income losses, and other costs.
To assess the impact of tobacco use on a smoker’s finances both over a lifetime and in a single year, WalletHub calculated the potential monetary losses — including the cumulative cost of a cigarette pack per day over several decades, healthcare expenditures, income losses, and other costs — brought on by smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke.
“For our calculations, we assumed an adult who smokes one pack of cigarettes per day beginning at age 21, when a person can legally purchase tobacco products in the U.S. We also assumed a lifespan of 48 more years, taking into account that 69 is the average age at which a smoker dies,” WalletHub says. “To determine per-person Out-of-Pocket Costs Over a Lifetime, we took the average cost of a pack of cigarettes in each state and multiplied that figure by the total number of days in 48 years. For Costs per Year, we multiplied the average cost by 365 days.”
WalletHub says direct medical costs to treat smoking-connected health complications are one of the biggest financial drains caused by tobacco use.
“To calculate related health-care costs, we obtained state-level data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — namely the annual health care costs caused by smoking — and divided that amount by the total number of adult smokers in each state,” the organization says.
The Financial Cost of Smoking in Washington (1=Highest, 25=Avg.):
- Overall rank for Washington: 10th
- Out-of-Pocket Cost per Smoker – $196,399 (Rank: 12th)
- Financial-Opportunity Cost per Smoker – $3,329,350 (Rank: 12th)
- Health-Care Cost per Smoker – $221,788 (Rank: 12th)
- Income Loss per Smoker – $780,408 (Rank: 8th)
- Total Cost Over Lifetime per Smoker: $4,542,913
- Total Cost per Year per Smoker: $94,644
To view the full report and your state or the District’s rank, visit:
https://wallethub.com/edu/the-financial-cost-of-smoking-by-state/9520
