This calculator works out your smoking pack-years and the lifetime cost of smoking in New Zealand, two numbers that bring home both the health exposure and the money involved. A pack-year is the standard medical measure of how much someone has smoked over their life: one pack of twenty cigarettes a day for one year equals one pack-year, so it is simply packs per day multiplied by the number of years smoked. Half a pack a day for twenty years is ten pack-years, the same as a full pack a day for ten years. Doctors use the figure to gauge cumulative tobacco exposure and the associated risk of smoking-related disease, and it often comes up in health checks and screening. Alongside the health measure, the cost is sobering: with New Zealand's high tobacco taxes a pack can cost around thirty-five dollars or more, so a daily habit runs to tens of thousands of dollars over the years. You enter your packs per day, the number of years you have smoked, and the price of a pack, and the calculator returns your pack-years and the total amount spent. Seeing both figures together is a powerful motivator, and quitting improves health and frees up that money. This is general information, not medical advice; support to quit is available through your doctor and Quitline.
A pack-year is one pack a day for a year. Quitting improves health and frees the money. General information, not medical advice; Quitline can help.
Pack-years are your packs per day times the years smoked. The yearly cost is your packs per day times the price per pack times 365 days, and the total spent is that yearly cost times the years smoked.
Smoking one pack a day for 15 years is 15 pack-years. At 35 dollars a pack, that is about 12,775 dollars a year, or roughly 191,625 dollars over the 15 years.
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