You'll Never Guess How Much Smoking Costs You in Massachusetts

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By Kasandra Brabaw (Patch staff)

We all know how smoking damages your health. The “Tips from Former Smokers” campaign shows how smoking can damage your body as people such as Terrie and Shawn give smokers tips on how to shower, get dressed, mow the lawn and eat with a hole in your neck. Graphic commercials advocating against tobacco use also show “The Real Cost” of smoking with people who are asked to rip out a tooth or peel off some skin in order to buy their next pack of cigarettes.

But, possibly even more jarring, is the knowledge that smoking costs each person in Massachusetts more than $1.9 million over his or her lifetime.

In support of Tobacco Free Awareness Week, financial support website WalletHub calculated the monetary costs of smoking in each of the 50 statesplus the District of Columbia. And the results are shocking.

WalletHub found that smoking costs the most in Northeastern states such as New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Vermont, where people pay at least $1.7 million over their lifetime to smoke.

But even states on the low end – like South Carolina, West Virginia and Kentucky – require smokers to pay more than $1 million.

WalletHub calculated costs based on four factors: tobacco costs, health care costs, income loss and other costs.

To estimate tobacco costs, the financial website assumed a person would buy one pack of cigarettes every day from age 18 (when it’s legal to purchase tobacco in the United States) to age 69 (the average age a smoker dies.) They then multiplied the average cost of cigarettes in each state with that number.

For Massachusetts, where an average pack of cigarettes cost $9.08, tobacco costs each smoker $1,457,854.

While tobacco accounts for the brunt of the financial cost of smoking in each state, WalletHub shows health care costs, income loss and other costs also make up a big chunk of change.

These three factors cost Massachusetts residents more than $500,000.

WalletHub used the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s data of the amount of annual health care costs per state to calculate health care costs. They divided that number by the total number of adult smokers in each state, which averaged to $238,937 for Massachusetts smokers.

But smokers shouldn’t only worry about health care and tobacco costs. A study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta shows that smokers make on average 20 percent less than their non-smoking peers. WalletHub used this data to calculate income loss for smokers in each state.

“We assumed an average 8 percent decrease in the median household income for each state,” WalletHub said.

That number accounts for absenteeism, workplace bias and lower productivity due to smoking-induced health problems, according to WalletHub.

In Massachusetts, smokers are expected to lose $269,831 in income over their lifetime.

WalletHub estimates “other costs” for the state would add up to $12,429. Included in this number are an increase in homeowner’s insurance premium and secondhand-smoke exposure costs.

When WalletHub combined Massachusetts’s tobacco costs, health care costs, income loss and other costs, the financial site found smoking costs Massachusetts smokers $1,979,050.

Anyone who wishes to quit smoking, but may need a little push to do so can call the Massachusetts Smoker’s Helpline for advice and support.

News tips? Email charlene.arsenault@patch.com.