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Over the course of a lifetime, an American smoker will spend anywhere between $3.17 million and $1.7 million on cigarettes and associated costs, according to a new study on the true costs of tobacco use.
Massachusetts is the most expensive state in the nation in which to be a smoker.
A pack-per-day Massachusetts smoker will spend $3.17 million over a lifetime on cigarettes, lost income, health care, and other financial losses due to tobacco addiction, according to WalletHub’s “The Real Cost of Smoking by State.”
The study considers several categories including out-of-pocket costs for buying cigarettes; financial opportunity costs, which include how much a person would have earned by investing the money in the stock market instead of smokes; health-care costs; income loss due to absenteeism, workplace bias, or lower productivity due to smoking-related health issues; and other costs such as higher homeowners’ insurance premiums and the price of second-hand smoke to others.
Annually, tobacco use costs a Massachusetts smoker more than $66,000 per year, the study said.
The next most expensive places to be a smoker are New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island as well as Washington, D.C.
Contributing most to the high cost of smoking is the financial loss that could have been earned by investing the money instead of burning it. If a Massachusetts smoker invested the money they would have otherwise spent on cigarettes into the stockmarket, WalletHub estimated that person would have earned $1.9 million over a lifetime.
Massachusetts has the fourth most expensive cigarette prices in the nation with a lifetime of smokes costing about $175,000. New York has the most expensive cigarettes in the U.S. - a lifetime of cigarettes in New York costs about $183,000, the study said.
The least expensive place to be a smoker in the U.S. is Mississippi where a lifetime smoker will spend $1.7 million - about $96,000 of that would be directly spent on cigarettes.
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