Quit Smoking, Save a Grand?

A pack of cigarettes in New York is more expensive than anywhere else in the country, at $8.66 (in New York City, cigarette taxes are higher, bringing the price up to $9.72). Yet in New York, only 34 packs are sold annually per capita, bringing tobacco spending to $296--still an attractive savings.

The cheapest pack of cigarettes can be found in tobacco-rich South Carolina, where a $.07 cigarette tax brings the price of a pack to only $3.33. But that doesn't mean individuals in the state spend less on smoking overall. In fact, because 91 packs a year are sold per person in South Carolina, residents spend $304 per year on smokes--more than highly taxed New Yorkers.

Taxes on cigarettes have a direct effect on smoking rates, and New York's prohibitive cigarette costs are a big part of why New Yorkers buy fewer packs.

"Raising the cigarette tax is the simplest, fastest way to reduce smoking," says Eric Lindbloom, director for policy research at the Campaign for Tobacco-free Kids. "There's an immediate response. People cut back more, they quit more, they call quit lines and buy nicotine-replacement therapy more. Every indicator shows that as the price increases you end up with fewer people smoking."

Extra Expenses

But the price of cigarettes themselves isn't the only cost of smoking. Delaware--which sells the most cigarettes per capita out of any state--also spends $284 million on smoking-related health costs per year, and smoking-caused productivity losses cost the state $304 million per year. It's even harder to calculate costs like carpet cleaning, lost home value and even missed job opportunities--some employers now won't hire smokers.

Even though most smokers know the proven health risks and long-term costs of smoking, it often takes a hike in the price of a pack to bring home the negative consequences of the habit.

Terry Pechacek, associate director for science at the CDC's Office for Smoking and Health, says that the immediacy of higher smoking costs often pushes people toward breaking the chains of addiction.