Smoking can not only ruin your health, but it can also burn a nasty hole through your wallet. Tobacco use accounts for nearly half a million premature deaths in the U.S. each year and is the leading cause of lung cancer, according to the American Lung Association. Even those around tobacco smokers aren’t safe from its harmful effects. Since 1964, smoking-related illnesses have claimed 20 million lives in the U.S., 2.5 million of which belonged to nonsmokers who developed diseases merely from secondhand-smoke exposure.
However, the economic and societal costs of smoking-related issues are just as staggering. Every year, Americans collectively spend a total of $326 billion, including nearly $170 billion in direct health-care costs and more than $156 billion in lost productivity due to premature death and exposure to secondhand smoke. Unfortunately, some people will have to pay more depending on the state in which they live.
In light of Tobacco-Free Awareness Week and to encourage the more than 66 million tobacco users in the U.S. to kick the dangerous habit, WalletHub’s analysts gauged the true per-person cost of smoking in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. We did so by calculating the potential monetary losses — including the cumulative cost of a cigarette pack per day over several decades, health care expenditures, income losses and other costs — brought on by smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke.