Lifetime costs of being a smoker in CT? About $2.1 million

Connecticut smokers beware — that habit isn’t just harming your health, but it can end up costing you more than $2.1 million dollars.

The financial web site WalletHub did a survey looking at the true per-person cost of smoking in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Researchers looked at such expenses as the lifetime and annual cost of a cigarette pack per day, health care expenditures, income losses and other costs brought on by smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke.

Connecticut smokers had one of the highest lifetime costs at $2,188,930. Only two states were more expensive for those who light up — New York, where average lifetime cost was $2,330,381, and Massachusetts, where it was $2,209,285.

According to WalletHub, since 1964, smoking-related illnesses have claimed 20 million lives in the U.S., 2.5 million of which belonged to nonsmokers who developed diseases merely from secondhand-smoke exposure.

But the costs are financial as well as physical, as smoking costs the country more than $300 billion, which includes both medical care and lost productivity.

The smokers themselves also shell out a fair amount, particularly in Connecticut. The WalletHub researcher found smokers in the state not only lost more than $2.1 over a lifetime, but their annual cost was $42,920.