With the economic costs of smoking totalling more than $600 billion per year in the U.S., the cost on health systems is significant. Tobacco use accounts for nearly half a million deaths in the U.S. each year and is the leading cause of lung cancer.
However, in a country as large as the U.S. the relative costs are not evenly distributed. These variances have been detected by the personal-finance website WalletHub. This is in the report The Real Cost of Smoking by State.
The report not only presents the comparative data, it also aims to encourage the estimated 28.3 million tobacco users in the U.S. to kick this dangerous habit.
For the analysis, WalletHub has calculated the potential monetary losses — including the lifetime and annual costs of a pack of cigarettes per day, health care expenditures, income losses and other costs — brought on by smoking and exposure to second-hand smoke.
The outcome produces a list of the states with the highest smoking costs:
1. New York
2. District of Columbia
3. Maryland
4. Connecticut
5. Rhode Island
6. Massachusetts
7. Minnesota
8. Hawaii
9. Alaska
10. Washington
In contrast, the states with the lowest smoking costs are:
42. Kentucky
43. Idaho
44. South Carolina
45. Georgia
46. Louisiana
47. North Dakota
48. North Carolina
49. Alabama
50. Missouri
51. Mississippi
Taking into account the typical economics, the estimated lifetime cost of smoking is more than $3.7 million per smoker. In terms of the costs incurred by individuals, the average out-of-pocket cost per smoker is $154,097 over a lifetime.
The distribution of costs shows some variance and smokers in New York will pay the highest cost, shelling out two times more than smokers in Missouri, who pay the least.
There are other ways to assess costs. For example, each smoker will incur an average of $595,052 in income loss over a lifetime. Smokers in the District of Columbia will lose the highest amount – 1.9 times more than in Mississippi, where smokers will lose the lowest amount.
Taking another measure, each smoker will incur an average of $195,993 in smoking-related health care costs over a lifetime. Smokers in Connecticut will pay the highest amount – 2.6 times more than in Tennessee, where smokers will pay the lowest amount.
