MURFREESBORO, Tenn. (WMOT) -- If you live in Tennessee and smoke, plan on spending a cool million dollars on your habit.
Our reporting partners at the personal finance website Wallethub.com decided to estimate the individual costs of smoking by state in honor of national Tobacco Free Awareness Week.
Wallethub’s Jill Gonzalez says several factors went into estimating the lifetime costs of smoking.
“In Tennessee it costs about $1.1 million over the course of someone’s lifetime to be a smoker, and that includes the tobacco costs, of course, over a lifetime, healthcare costs, income losses, so things that people might not think about.”
Gonzalez says that Tennessee is actually one of the cheapest places in the country to live if you’re a smoker. That’s due in part to relatively low healthcare costs.
She also notes that Tennessee’s tobacco taxes are quite low. Smokers in Tennessee pay less than a dollar in taxes per pack, while smokers in New York pay more than $5 per pack in taxes alone.
Would you like to review the complete wallethub.com study?