The total private and social costs of smoking amount to $40 per pack.
$33 ($1.65 per sickerette) of this total represent private losses to smokers themselves, primarily in the form of lost life expectancy.
The other $7 is paid for by others through taxes, increased medical costs and second hand smoke effects.
As a rough approximation, smokers lose 1 minute of life expectancy for every minute spent smoking. Each pack of sickerettes costs two hours of life expectancy based on about six minutes to smoke each sickerette.
The average smoker evidently smokes about 400 packs a year, which implies giving up 800 hours of future life expectancy, or a little more than two hours a day.
[ Info obtained from The Price of Smoking by Don Taylor and Chris Conover]
I smoked for 20 years – that’s 20 x 400= 8000 packs
8000 packs x 2 hours = 16000 hours cut off from my life
16,000 hrs is approximately 667 days or nearly 2 years I gave up of my life just to smoke!
2 Years just went up in a meaningless cloud of smoke simply to keep my addictive neurons happy!
Cost to me personally $264,000
Cost to Society $56,000
TOTAL COST of Thomas’ Addiction $320,000
I could buy a very nice house for that!
Smoking sucks!