How much do people actually spend on smoking?

You may be surprised to learn just how much smoking costs to those who have taken up the habit throughout Great Britain. Nicotinell, a specialist supplier of products to help people when they have goals of quitting smoking, has outlined the costs in the following investigation…

Important background data for the investigation

The basis of this investigation is that the average daily cigarette consumption for men across Great Britain during 2016 was 12 cigarettes, as per the Office for National Statistics’ Adult Smoking Habits in the UK: 2016 report. This figure sat at 11 cigarettes a day for women. Over a year, these figures work out at 4,380 cigarettes for men and 4,015 cigarettes for women.

Next, the UK’s leading cigarettes brands were identified by sales value, using research from Statista. These brands are as follows:

1. Sterling — £1.51 billion

2. Mayfair — £1.05 billion

3. Lambert & Butler — £788 million

4. Marlboro — £782 million

5. Richmond — £724 million

7. John Player Special — £677 million

8. Carlton — £541 million

9. Silk Cut — £504 million

10. Windsor — £462 million*

*While Players were the UK’s sixth leading cigarette brand, they have not been included in this research due to the data for this brand being unavailable on mysupermarket.co.uk.

Following this, the most popular 20-pack box of cigarettes from each of the brands identified above were selected and then the mean value calculated based on the price charged at the four of the biggest supermarket brands across the UK. The supermarkets selected were those with the highest market share according to Kantar Worldpanel, which are as follows:

1. Tesco — 27.8% 

2. Sainsbury’s — 15.8%

3. Asda — 15.3%

4. Morrisons — 10.4%

When it comes to the most popular 20-pack box of cigarettes from each brand and their mean value, we used the prices and popularity charts set out by mysupermarket.co.uk as of November 1st 2017. The results were as follows:

- Sterling Dual King Size — £8.24

- Mayfair White King Size — £8.89

- Lambert & Butler Original Silver King Size — £8.89

- Marlboro Gold King Size — £10.36

- Richmond Bright Blue Superkings — £8.89

- John Player Special Bright Blue Superkings — £7.35

- Carlton Superkings Red — £7.35

- Silk Cut King Size Silver — £10.66

- Windsor Blue JPS Superking Green — £7.89

With all of the aforementioned information gathered, the expected annual expenditure of the average male and female smoker on cigarettes across Great Britain can be calculated.

The investigation’s results

**The average expenditure has been worked out per the cost of a 20-pack of each cigarette product, under the assumption that they will need to purchase a new pack even if their average yearly expenditure doesn’t calculate to a sum of 20. For example, if a smoker has 42 cigarettes per year, they would need to purchase 3 x 20 packs of cigarettes.

The results put into context

Do the average expenditure figures across all products researched not look too high when only seen in the chart above? Then consider how much these popular purchases cost in comparison:

- A 49-inch Sony Bravia KD49XE9005 LED HDR 4K Ultra HD Smart Android TV can be purchased new from John Lewis for £1,199.

- A PS4 Pro 1TB, an Xbox One X and a Nintendo Switch can be purchased new from GAME for a total of £1,069.97 for all three consoles.

- A summer holiday for a family of four costs an average of £1,212, according to research from Asda Money, with this figure including flights, accommodation, food, clothes, phone data, and activities.

- The average Brit spends £1,042 a year on clothes, according to the Great British Wardrobe Report commissioned by Ariel.

- The average British household spends £753 on Christmas festivities, according to research carried out by Gocompare.com Money, with this figure including the costs to buy presents for friends and family, food and drink for the big day, partying and all of the festive decorations — including the Christmas tree.