Quitting is Cheaper than Smoking (in Australia)
G'day Team,
A post for my fellow Australian's today, I want to have a quick chat about one of the most common excuses I hear people talk about when say they can't quit smoking.
... well apart from being a pretty piss-weak excuse to keep sucking down poison, in Australia, that's downright incorrect. So let's do a cost-analysis of quitting smoking.
Cost of Smoking
I've never been a smoker, and I don't know the ins-and-outs of buying ciggies. But from what I can tell you're paying around $40 per pack of 40, or $1 per cigarettes. The cheapest I could find was a carton (200 cigarettes) for $115 (or 57c per cigarette). If we say, for simplicities sake, that you're paying 50c-$1 per cigarette and smoking half a pack a day, that's $5 to $10 per day. Over the course of a year that's ~$1800 to 3500 dollars.
If you're a pack-a-day smoker that buys their cigarettes from Coles, you're paying over $7000 per year. And this is counting nights out where you smoke extra, cigarettes your mates snag off you and the cost of lighters and matches.
Over ten years, smoking in Australia could easily cost you upwards of $50,000
Cost of Quitting
For the sake of simplicity, we'll consider the 'cost of quittin' as the cost of constant nicotine replacement therapy, and assume no one is going cold-turkey (no cost). The cost of nicotine-patches and other forms of nicotine replacement therapy is around $20 for 1 week, and cheaper if you buy lower doses.
Around $20 for 1 week, cheaper for the lower-dose patches.
Assuming it takes 6 months to quit (21 weeks) that's $420. Let's say that over the same period the average smoker is spending $7 a day on cigarettes, that's just over $1000.
Over six months, while quitting a quitter will save more than $600! For the rest of their life, they'll save about $2000 a year! If you're a heavy smoker (a pack a day) those savings become $1600 and $4000 respectively... and this is all assuming you buy your cigarettes dirt-cheap!
Thanks
As usual, thank for reading team. I hope any smokers out there have taken this onboard and go chat with their GP about getting started on quitting!
Thanks
-tfc
In the United States overall smoking has been on the decline, but is still quite prevalent. The biggest change I've seen lately is that a lot of former smokers quit by vaping. I dunno how healthy vaping is, but it seems a lot better than smoking so I suppose that's good.
From the preliminary research is carries about 1/8th the risk of smoking... in the west smoking is declining but unfortunately globally rates are on the rise as a lot of third world nations are just starting to get proper access to cigarettes :(
I went to Greece recently and everyone smoked, everywhere, all the time. It was gross. Not quitting for cost reasons seems dumb.
Also, I found you while browsing the teamaustralia tag. We have a pretty strong Team Australia community going here to support each other. If you'd like to be part of it, then please check out this post for the steps on how to join.
I tried gums and patches. One gave me mouth ulcers the other skin rashes. What worked best for me was in fact vape. Since vape contains purified nicotine in PEG , I think it would make it relatively safe. I mean compare that to number of carcinogens in that single puff of ciggarate. If quitting is the goal cape is a good option, in my opinion.
PS since capes aren't readily available in India, I used eCiggarates by EON. It doesn't produce as much smoke as those vapes I saw in San Diego, but yes it works on same principle and did the job for me.
Yeah I think nicotine replacement therapy in any form is a viable option... be that vape, patch, gum or eCigarette. In Australia it's silly that Nicotine in vapes is illegal. I understand the 'gateway' concern, but for a smoker to quit it really should be an option.