Anyone who smokes can tell you the habit has gotten expensive lately -- $5 to $6 for a pack of cigarettes.
What the retail price doesn't reveal is smoking's hidden costs.
THE TAB
In Minnesota, that includes $1 billion a year, for example, in nursing-home care for patients disabled by heart disease, cancer and other tobacco-related ailments. Also, more than $200 million a year goes to prescription drugs for the same illnesses. About $4 million per year is for neonatal care for infants of smoking mothers.
THE SMOKEOUT
Blue Cross commissioned the figures from economist Jeffrey Fellows to mark Thursday's observance of the Great American Smokeout, an annual effort to help smokers quit.
EVERYONE PAYS
Altogether, smoking costs Minnesotans nearly $3 billion a year -- whether they smoke or not -- according to figures released Wednesday by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota.
That works out to $554 per person per year, mostly in higher insurance premiums and taxes for public health-care programs.
57,000 DIPLOMAS
Adult smoking rates have dropped sharply in Minnesota in the past decade, from 22 percent in 1999 to 17 percent in 2007, a feat that medical experts consider one of the great public-health successes.
Even so, Blue Cross estimates that if every smoker quit, Minnesota would save enough money every year to give 57,000 kids a college education or build 12 brand new interstate freeway bridges.
