Sunday, December 5, 2010

Economic Costs of Smoking compared to Economic Benefits

In response to the following comment from an earlier post:

AS far as class goes.. i think its ironic that the argument in this article claims that cigarettes cost the US economy money. For so many years the argument for cigarettes has been how much money it has and will bring into our economy. It would be interesting to look at comparing the money gained by cigarettes to the money lost because of them.

The CDC has performed this comparison. The posted link includes an estimate that "total economic costs (direct medical costs and lost productivity) associated with cigarette smoking are estimated at $10.47 per pack" while "the average retail price of a pack of cigarettes in the United States was approximately $4.80".

2 comments:

  1. This is an awesome find especially in light of the current movement on campus to go completely smoke-less.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Does this analysis include environmental costs as well? How was the analysis actually carried out?

    ReplyDelete