Smoking is costing Florida residents around $3.8 million over a lifetime and is causing them to lose at least $600,000 of their income, a new study finds.
Personal finance agency WalletHub on Wednesday revealed the cost of smoking in every state, including in Florida, and in the District of Columbia.
Overall, Florida has one of the lowest lifetime costs related to smoking, with expenses totaling $3,807,428. Across the U.S., the Sunshine State ranked 33rd on the list.
Annually, smoking in the U.S. has a price tag of $600 billion when it comes to medical expenses and lost productivity due to smoking-related health concerns. According to WalletHub, smoking can cause people to miss work and lose their income.
“Smoking has greatly declined in the U.S. in recent decades, but nearly 50 million people still use tobacco products. Buying cigarettes for your entire adult life can cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars, but that number pales in comparison to the hidden costs of smoking,” WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo said in the report.
“Over a lifetime, smokers lose out on millions of dollars they could have made if they’d invested the money they spent on tobacco. Smokers also tend to have lower wages, higher health care costs and higher home insurance premiums.”
Source: WalletHub
Some considerations when compiling data included direct medical costs per smoker, the number of cigarette packs a person smokes daily and exposure to secondhand smoke.
To calculate out-of-pocket costs, experts multiplied the average price of a pack of cigarettes in each state by the total number of days in 48 years, as well as by 365 days to retrieve the yearly costs.
The values of financial opportunity were configured by calculating the amount of return a person would have earned by investing money in the stock market over the same period, rather than smoking. This was done using the historical average market return rate for the S&P 500.
Other smoking-related costs, such as homeowner’s insurance and “the harmful smoke that tobacco releases into the air,” were also factors in the ranking, WalletHub reported.
Here’s how that breaks down in Florida over a lifetime:
Out-of-pocket cost (rank): $158,906 (35)Financial opportunity cost (rank): $2,783,535 (35)Health-care cost per smoker (rank): $222,105 (20)Income loss per smoker (rank): $619,583 (35)Other costs per smoker (rank): $23,299 (1)
And Floridians spend the following annually:
Total cost per smoker: $79,321Out-of-pocket cost (rank): $3,311 (35)Financial opportunity cost (rank): $57,990 (35)Health-care cost per smoker (rank): $4,627 (20)Income loss per smoker (rank): $12,908 (35)Other costs per smoker (rank): $485 (1)
Historically, Florida has went up one spot since 2024 and three spots in the national ranking since 2025. In 2023, Florida’s slot remained at No. 33.
Source: WalletHub
Here are the top 10 priciest states for smoking and their total costs per smoker:
District of Columbia, $5,863,664 Maryland, $5,843,123New York, $5,788,994Connecticut, $5,505,490Rhode Island, $5,473,821Massachusetts, $5,360,623Hawaii, $5,076,818Washington, $5,055,862Alaska, $5,054,561New Jersey, $5,001,299
>> See WalletHub’s full methodology: The Real Cost of Smoking by State (2026)