Smoking is revolting. There’s no debate about that and smokers know it. It’s smelly, it’s now highly antisocial, it doesn’t satisfy your thirst or hunger and contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t relax you. In fact it does the opposite.
You get a very short, two-minute burst of dopamine (the chemical in your brain that gives you that ‘feel good’ factor) then 48 hours of agitation – to which you keep going back for more. It’s a vicious circle with no end.
Also, and this will come as no real surprise, it’s a major contributing factor to various cancers, heart disease, chronic bronchitis, emphysema and pneumonia.
But we know all that, so what’s the true cost of smoking in economic terms?
In a recent report by ASH (Action on Smoking & Health), a campaigning public health charity set up in 1970 by the Royal College of Physicians to eliminate the harm caused by tobacco, they revealed the true cost of smoking both to individuals and society at large and some of the numbers may shock you…
- In 2014, the average price of a pack of 20 ‘premium’ cigarettes is about £8.50
- Around £6.50 of that goes straight into the Government coffers
- Nationally we spend around £15bn a year on tobacco…
- …with the cost to the economy put at around £14bn
If you’re a 20-a-day smoker, it will cost you a little over £3,100 a year in real terms (if you and your partner both smoke a pack a day, that’s closing in on six and a half grand on cigarettes a year!) To put that number into perspective, you can buy a brand-new Dacia Sandero hatchback and have enough left over to insure it. You can buy five season tickets at Arsenal or you could buy this stunning Breitling watch.
However you dress it up or try and justify it to yourself, it’s expensive. Think about it for a minute – £6,500 a year…
Where broader society is concerned, the costs are equally staggering. Spread between local and national health services, businesses, local government and the emergency services, the annual cost breakdowns are as follows –
- Smoking litter – £300,000,000
- Domestic fires – £500,000,000
- Passive smoking – £700,000,000
- Sick days – £2,500,000,000
- NHS care – £2,700,000,000
- Smoking breaks – £2,900,000,000
- Output loss from early death – £4,100,000,000
It costs the economy £4.1bn a year due to the loss of productivity from people dying as a result of smoking.
The report claims that businesses and the local economy bear the brunt of the costs, alluding to the fact that reducing smoking improves productivity and revitalises local economies. Think about it – 10 cigarette breaks a day at about five minutes each is about an hour a day, four hours a week and about 235 hours a year – that’s over 29 working days a year per person lost to smoking.
That’s like taking a month off every year to smoke and in a medium-sized business, months of productivity every year are being lost.
Smoking is expensive, both in real terms and in overall economic terms and here at Behavioural Freedom, I use a proven scientific method to help you quit smoking for good. I combine hypnotherapy with Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to change your fundamental thought processes and behaviours as well as connecting with your subconscious to get you to think and act in new ways.
If you want to stop smoking, please contact me today and I will put you on the path to behavioural freedom.