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In a recent article* Morgan Stanley tobacco analyst David Adelman compares
the average price of a package of cigarettes to how long it takes to buy that package based on minutes of work. How many minutes do you think it takes to pay off a pack of cigarettes in Canada, the U.S. etc.? Words: 557
So asks Melanie Epp in edited excerpts from an article** posted on http://blog.yourmoney.ca.
Lorimer Wilson, editor of www.FinancialArticleSummariesToday.com (A site for sore eyes and inquisitive minds) and www.munKNEE.com (Your Key to Making Money!), has edited the article below for length and clarity – see Editor’s Note at the bottom of the page. This paragraph must be included in any article re-posting to avoid copyright infringement.
Epp goes on to say, in part:
The results were both surprising and interesting. At the bottom of the list [see below] were the countries of Russia, Ukraine, Japan and Brazil, where a pack of smokes can be earned in anywhere from five to 15 minutes. In the U.S., a pack of smokes can be purchased after approximately 17 minutes of work, whereas in Canada, it takes 31 minutes to earn those 20 cigarettes.
In terms of the most minutes work to earn enough to buy a package of cigarettes, India (70), Mexico (68), Indonesia (53), and Malaysia (50) are clearly at the bottom of the list. You have to work pretty hard to support a bad habit in those countries.
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The cost of quitting smoking
Not sure how much you spend on smoking? Check out the Canadian Cancer Society’s cost of smoking calculator….
I was a smoker for many years and in the end, I went cold turkey. I was just tired of tobacco being in charge of me. Going cold turkey isn’t for everyone, however. Here are some of the other methods people use to quit smoking:
- Hypnosis: Hypnosis is a proven technique that works for most people most of the time – but it’s costly. A two-hour session can set you back as much as $300.
- Nicotine patches, lozenges and inhalers: Nicotine replacements abound these days. You can even buy inhalers that look like cigarettes and provide you with that nicotine hit without the other nasty chemicals. It even gives you the hand to mouth action that so many people have a hard time quitting but those replacements can be costly – sometimes as much as the cigarettes themselves and, while they are healthier, at the end of the day using nicotine replacements isn’t really quitting. Some people use the replacements for many years after they quit, still incurring quite heavy costs.
- Prescription medication: Different prescriptions cost different amounts. The good news is that there are programs to help smokers quit. In Ontario, for example, there’s the Ontario Drug Benefit Program (ODB), through which more than 300,000 smokers can receive 12 weeks of reimbursement for smoking cessation therapies like Champix or Zyban. In order to qualify for the program, though, you must be 65 years of age or older, a resident of a long-term home care or a resident of a home for special care, receiving professional services under the Home Care program, be a Trillium Drug Program registrant or a social assistance recipient
Besides taxing your health, cigarettes also tax the health care system. Canada-wide, there’s about $4.4 billion per year in health care costs because of smoking, says MSN Money but then that very system is funded by the taxes on cigarettes, and big tobacco has many enablers…. It’s a vicious circle.
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If you want to kick the habit and save big, contact the Canadian Cancer Society’s Quitline at 1-866-366-3667 or visit the government’s Healthy Canadians website.
Source of original articles:
- *http://www.businessinsider.com/price-pack-of-cigarettes-around-the-world-2012-10
- **http://blog.yourmoney.ca/2012/10/the-cost-of-cigarettes-around-the-world.html
Editor’s Note: The above post may have been edited ([ ]), abridged (…), and reformatted (including the title, some sub-titles and bold/italics emphases) for the sake of clarity and brevity to ensure a fast and easy read. The article’s views and conclusions are unaltered and no personal comments have been included to maintain the integrity of the original article.
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