The Unexpected Costs of Smoking
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It’s easy to assume that the only cost of smoking is the initial purchase. This is no cheap expenditure either. Because of heavy taxation and shipping and handling fees, smokers pay much more. Calculating savings on NHS Inform reveals that, with the average price of a pack of cigarettes amounting to about £13 in the UK, you can save up to £4,745 in a year by simply not smoking 20 cigarettes per day.
This is only the baseline expense. Other unexpected costs of smoking can make the vice more trouble than it is worth. Intrigued? Keep reading for a closer look.
Smoking and the environment
The global cultivation of 32.4 Mt of green tobacco contributes almost 84 Mt of CO2 emissions to climate change. Tobacco production also uses more than 22 billion tonnes of water. This doesn’t even include the damage of tobacco usage itself, wherein discarded cigarette butts cost the UK £40 million a year, and hundreds of toxic chemicals are released into the air, land and water.
These add significant pressure to the planet’s increasingly scarce resources and fragile ecosystems. This means that the demand and cost of everyday expenditures increase with the limited supply of resources, which can further lead to reduced food production and worsening health conditions.
Smoking and medical expenses
When one smokes, one doesn’t only affect one’s health. Thanks to smoking’s environmental damage, more individuals become exposed to toxic chemicals that can cause coronary heart disease, stroke, lung cancer, and other diseases.
Healthcare costs in the UK amount to £2.4 billion. This has yet to include the productivity costs to the economy from smoking, which amounts to £13.2 billion, including £6 billion of smoking-related lost earnings, £5.7 billion of smoking-related unemployment and £1.44 billion of smoking-related early deaths.
Alternative expenditures
For merely the amount a smoker spends purchasing cigarettes annually, one can buy a family holiday abroad (including hotel, flights and entertainment and spending money). This shows us that there are plenty of better places to put your money rather than the tobacco stick.
If nicotine is still something that you need to get by daily, you can look towards alternatives like smokeless NRTs. These do not cause air pollution nor contain tobacco’s harmful toxins. You can simply buy nicotine pouches online at Prilla and have them shipped to your doorstep. Pouches can be used anywhere from work or the public park. You can also simply purchase nicotine gum or lozenges at the local convenience store. These even come in various flavours, so making the switch is easier.
If you hope to quit the vice entirely, you can subscribe to a fitness app like Peloton or a meditation guide like FWFG. This helps distract smokers from cravings and encourages the body’s natural detoxification by promoting perspiration and blood circulation. At the same time, this strengthens your cardiovascular health, so that you can begin your body’s recovery to live a longer and healthier life.
As we’ve discussed previously in Get Healthy, however, there are some fitness options that are fortunately free of charge. You could go for a run, watch and follow Youtube workout videos, or attend classes at the local park. You may also opt to spend your hard-earned cash on a food subscription box so that you get access to the healthiest and freshest groceries of the week without having to spend hours in line at the store.
Did any of these costs surprise you? Calculate how much you are spending on smoking today, and with a couple of adjustments, you could be living a more frugal and healthy life and securing your financial future by spending less money.
