Yahoo! News - Study: Cigarettes Cost Society $40 a Pack

Yahoo! News - Study: Cigarettes Cost Society $40 a Pack

Those of you who know me, probably have heard my discussion of smoking. I truly can not understand it. People know it is bad for them, yet do it anyways. All I can figure it is just so addictive that once they start, they can not easily quit.

In my introductory Finance classes, it is common to calculate the difference in retirement savings if person A. smokes a pack a day whereas person B invests the $5.00 a day. (for the record, the difference in Future value terms can be over $1 million dollars and under differing assumptions (including Insurance rates too) the difference may be even higher of up to $2 million!

When I tell people the numbers, I am generally laughed at. Well maybe some of that lauging will stop.

We now have more evidence of these costs from a team of researchers from Duke and the University of South Florida. They find that the cost to society is $40 a PACK!!!. While the cost to the smoker is about $33 per pack! And even that large number does not include such incendentals as the increases cleaning costs.

"It will be necessary for persons aged 24 and younger to face the fact that the decision to smoke is a very costly one — one of the most costly decisions they make," the study's authors concluded"

"Despite the finding that smoking is a costly habit for individuals, society carries less of a burden than generally believed, the study's authors determined.


"The reason the number is low is that for private pensions, Social Security, and Medicare 'the biggest factors in calculating costs to society 'smoking actually saves money," Sloan said. "Smokers die at a younger age and don't draw on the funds they've paid into those systems."


So PLEASE PLEASE quit smoking!!!!!!