Societal Costs Of Smoking In Illinois Amount To $55,505 Per Smoker Annually

By The Center Square:

The economic and societal costs of smoking in Illinois – including health care costs and out-of-pocket product costs – totaled $55,505 per smoker per year, according to a new analysis from the WalletHub website.

The financial services website ranked which of the 50 states and the District of Columbia had the lowest and highest such costs. Illinois was ranked 11th highest based on WalletHub’s calculations.

Smokers in the state were also found to pay out $3,208 in out-of-pocket costs per year, the 42nd lowest such expenditure among the states and Washington, D.C., according to the WalletHub analysis.

Nationally, smoking costs total more than $300 billion annually, according to the study, which estimated that there are 34.2 million smokers in the United States.

The website examined per-person costs of smoking by measuring the out-of-pocket costs, the amount of the return on investment that could have been realized by investing these out-of-pocket costs, health care costs per smoker, income losses and other costs, such as higher property insurance premiums.

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