How the fuck do people afford to smoke?

[StrongerThanIThought76]

Let me start by saying I've never smoked. Never even tried it. My mum did, from her teens, all through my childhood, through some serious health issues and finally stopped after a smoking related cancer. Of course there are a hundred reasons not to smoke these days - health, social exclusion etc etc.

I worked out that over 50 years she's spent almost £150k on fags, conservatively basing that on 20 a day.

She's never had any savings, only been on a few holidays and still harbours resentment that my dad has a much wealthier lifestyle (bigger house, better car etc since they divorced 30 years ago).

So with the cost of a packet of 'premium' fags costing in excess of £10 a pack AIBU to think that smokers have got their priorities massively wrong money-wise?

I've no idea but it's sad that when the new packaging came in one of my regular customers started pleading and crying for me to magically reduce the price so he could afford them :-(

Another has now resorted to begging other customers to either give him money or buy them for him. This guy has intimidated people and made small children cry with his persistent begging :-(

a lot of those arguments also apply to obesity

to be fair, you can stop smoking and move on, but you can't stop eating and you are remembering about food at least 3 times a day, so it's not that easy.

Must be quite a shock when you work out a lifetime of buying cigarettes could have bought yourself a house.

It can genuinely change your dopamines. So yes it can be an addiction (not for everyone).

I started smoking on menthols in my 20s so can see the logic at them getting phased out now (recent licensing laws). It disguises the drug.

"I worked out that over 50 years she's spent almost £150k on fags, conservatively basing that on 20 a day.
So with the cost of a packet of 'premium' fags costing in excess of £10 a pack "

You are massively over exaggerating the cost of smoking.

In the 80's, we calculated that a couple I knew, who both smoked, could have paid off a 30k Mortgage over a 20 year term. You could get a nice house for that then.

However, I've never smoked and it did used to piss me off when I had Women who did make sly comments about how much I spent on Make-up and clothes.

Women of my generation (and probably your Mums) are less financially well of when compared to their Male peers because of lots of factors, such as being paid less, less opportunities, inability to work similar hours etc.

My grandmother often goes to Gibraltar and buys tobacco on the cheap, brings it back, and sells it to my partner 50grams for only a fiver. V cheap system and lasts for ages.

How can you ask how "people" can afford to smoke when "people" don't all have the same income? It's like asking how "people" can afford to drink alcohol or how "people" can afford to eat out a lot, or regular holidays etc. The question makes no sense at all.

I started smoking in my very early teens, so over 20 years ago. 20 were £2.50 ish then and I remember people being annoyed by how much they'd gone up in price. They're now 4-5x that much.

Personally I feel the same about people who drink - I don't understand how people can spend £60 on a night out, and drink at home etc etc. But that's probably because all my money goes on fags 😂 when I do a shop that includes a bit of booze (e.g. Christmas we got a couple of bottles of wine and some nice beers) I'm astounded by how much more our shopping costs so I must save a lot there over other people who drink regularly, especially when out as it's so expensive. I mean, a packet of cigarettes is about the equivalent of two drinks in a pub/bar depending what you have.

Weirdly, when I did quit I didn't seem to have more money - obviously I must have upped my casual spending unconsciously as I didn't save anything like I should have done.

I'm quitting again this month (the stress of the last 16 months tricked me back into it and I haven't been in a place where I feel I could stop but now I'm going to) and this time I'm literally going to put the cigarette money in a savings account at the start of each month.

back in the 80,s though you used to see school kids smoking does this still happen? there was a shop near my school that sold single cigarettes for 10 pence i cant imagine any shops doing that now!

They all vape now @x2boys

OP, I agree with you, total waste of money, money that could spent on more important things, I feel the same about alcohol (I rarely drink). The prices on cigarettes are so high but this is to try and force people to give up, sadly some people still chuck £10 away on a packet of fags whilst risking their health . I smoked as a teen but mainly to be sociable, back then everyone was doing it and a pack of 20 was around £3. Less people are smoking, you don’t see as many young people doing it so the rise in price and the awareness of health issues must be helping?

because you do, when you are addicted it doesn't matter how much it costs, you do without decent food to feed the addiction. I am an ex-smoker and honestly there are very few days I don't think about having a cigarette still (this is after 6 years too) but what puts me off now is the price - I was behind someone buying 200 cigs the other day and I nearly died at the price. It doesn't matter about all the health warning etc etc if you want it you will have it. I gave up the day I had a miscarriage - I didn't even know I was pregnant as I wasn't trying, it devastated me and I knew then I wanted a baby so I quit that day - never looked back but do still miss it

Why would you start that? Is it just a status thing like cigarettes used to be?

Kat I don’t see any teens vaping here, it’s mainly middle age men who think it’s cool (my parents vape and they are in their 60’s).

Spending money on fags is not the same as spending money on take away coffees or having your nails done. Neither of these will impact your health and the health of those around you in the same way as smoking. Smokers are great at justifying their actions, I listened to my DH do it for years before he quit. Spending money on cigarettes while your DC go without is appalling and unforgivable.

Back in the mid 90s my mum decided to quit her chain smoking habit and to help her, she put £10 notes on the wall of the living room. She couldn't cut right down. But in the end after only a few months she had saved over £500!
Really don't understand why anyone would even start smoking these days. Some kids think it's cool. But it should be seen as 'social suicide'.
You end up stinking and poor!

I had this argument with DP about priorities of him spending on tobacco every week etc then I looked at other things, I WAS meeting my friends in a cafe once a week and having a tea and a cake then I'd buy my OK mag every week and then the times I'd just nip into the shop for a chocolate bar or some crisps etc and I noted it for a week and was probably spending the same amount 😏

Every one has stuff they spend money on.

We did sit and talk about it properly, he now smokes cheaper cigs (his choice) and he's cut down to 5 a day (VERY PROUD OF HIM) I don't buy the mag anymore I realised I can see most if for free online and I only meet friends every other week. We now do it at one of the houses one of the weeks (costs us the same for us all that it did for one of us in the cafè) then one week at the cafe. I've cut chocolate out of my diet really ATM but we have a box of them that we get from Aldi or the pound shop instead, I have a few bars in the glove box and instead of just stopping at a garage as I pass in the car I can just get one out of there.

I've never smoked and I never want to tbh, it's something I really don't like but I don't think people who do smoke have wrong priorities, my DP uses it as a time out and it calms him down if he's having a bad day at work. The same as I use reading and bubble baths.

I don't drink alcohol (or smoke) and think it's a bad idea for at least five reasons. Why focus on smokers OP? Maybe because you drink? Why do you drink? Apart from a very small beneficial effect from moderate red wine consumption, drinking alcohol is a pointless activity. Well, people enjoy it, that's the point. As with smoking.

And sometimes, with both smoking and alcohol (and heroin) people move beyond the point of enjoying these substances, but continue to use them in order to feel normal (avoid withdrawal symptoms).

to be fair, you can stop smoking and move on, but you can't stop eating and you are remembering about food at least 3 times a day, so it's not that easy.

It wasn't easy to walk past newsagents/supermarket kiosks that all sold cigarettes, when I was giving up. In fact it was bloody hard, although thankfully I managed it in the end.

Smokers also have to remember about food 3 times a day and after a meal is one of the most difficult times to not reach for a cigarette, as eating lowers your nicotine levels.

Addiction is addiction, whether it's food, tobacco, alcohol or cocaine etc.

Some people finding it easy to kick, does not mean others will. If that were the case, no-one would be addicted to anything.

My main issue with smokers is not what they do with their cash, I don't care, but it's that they rarely smoke only at home and they are poisoning the rest of us.

An obese person will only impact directly on your life when they try to seat next to you on a plane, but that's pretty much it. The cost on the NHS is another matter.

I think a lot less people start smoking these days plus there afar fewer places people can smoke etc my mum worked in an office form about 1983 -1996 and she said when she first started people smoked at their desks imagine the outrage these days?

An obese person will only impact directly on your life when they try to seat next to you on a plane, but that's pretty much it. The cost on the NHS is another matter.

What about pregnant obese women? The potential risks to the child and the mother are very similar to smoking during pregnancy.

What about two obese parents? That means their children are approximately 10 to 12 times more likely to be overweight obese.

Sitting on a plane is far from 'pretty much it'.

The cost of smoking relative to wages is higher now than in the past so its silly to take current rates of premium cigarettes and multiply by number of cigarettes over the years.

You can see cigarette prices here and wage rises <a class="break-all" href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105210223/www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lmac/earnings-in-the-uk-over-the-past-25-years/2012/rpt-earnings-in-the-uk-over-the-past-25-years.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> here covering roughly the same period of time.

Cigarette prices rise more than 6 fold but wages at the lower end are less than double, wages at the top and triple (which is interesting in itself)

I have colleagues who routinely buy a couple of coffees a day (£5), buy lunch every day instead of taking it in most days (£50-10), get takeaways or go to the cinema every week, buy clothes they never wear. We all spend money on stuff we don't need.

Nicotine is an addiction - surprised that in 2017 there are still people who do not know this. Its vastly researched but simplified comments here

Regarding smoking in poverty - I can remember reading a lot of research on this years ago talking about "bad habits" in poverty. Basically low income smokers were often buying cigarettes in singles or fives when they could and using it as a few minutes of escape in a situation where they had no other 'treats' at all. Although I think Sue Townsend's book, The Queen and I explains why people in poverty make "bad" economic decisions better than any research paper.

Should be (£5-10) !

Sorry, I didn't mean to defend obesity, and I find it infuriating and disgusting the current political correctness of pretending that being fat is beautiful and acceptable (and I could go on)

All I meant is that smokers are directly affecting ME, whilst obese people not so much. I do find smokers worst than obese people, but I can see that it's harder to stop eating (which you can't!) than to stop smoking.