Adult Tobacco Cessation - Healthy Natrona County

Tobacco Cessation

The earlier in life you quit using tobacco, the greater the health and financial benefits you’ll experience – which means that it’s never too late to quit. Quitting tobacco is hard; you’ve likely already tried to quit more than once. Nicotine is highly addictive, legal to use, easy to acquire and smokeless tobacco can be used in public. But the short- and long-term benefits are worth the work. The more Casper can support our residents in tobacco cessation efforts, the healthier and happier our community will be.

The Cost of Smoking

Smoking doesn’t make much cents. In fact, it loses millions. Most of us are familiar with its devastating health risks like lung cancer, heart disease, COVID-19 complications, yellow teeth and the powerful, offensive odor. However, there’s also an enormous monetary expense to smoking that’s a lot more complex than just the cost of a pack of smokes (which is astronomical).

Personal finance website WalletHub calculated the cost of smoking to account of factors, including health-care costs, income loss, insurance premiums, second-hand smoke victims.

Financial Cost of Smoking = Out-of-Pocket Costs + Financial Opportunity Cost + Related Health-Care Costs + Income Loss Due to Smoking-Related Issues + Increase in Homeowner’s Insurance Premium + Secondhand Smoke-Exposure Costs.

Using this formula, they found that in Wyoming, the total cost per smoker is $1,901,495, and the out-of-pocket cost per year for one smoker is $2,168. If that smoker were to smoke for 48 years (beginning at the legal age of 21 and dying at the average smoker’s lifespan of 69, which is nearly ten years shorter than the national life expectancy), it would cost $39,614. That’s a lot of money for Wyoming to lose every year.

Fortunately, the Wyoming Quit Program is free.

Tobacco In Casper By The Numbers

19%

of Wyoming adults used cigarettes in 2017 – 2% higher than the median for all states and territories that year.

87%

of current adult smokers have tried to quit for at least one 24-hour or longer period in their lifetime.

48%

of current adult smokers have tried to quit for at least one 24-hour or longer period in the last 24 hours.

17%

of Wyoming men use smokeless tobacco.

1%

of Wyoming women use smokeless tobacco.

For information on sources, click here.

Helpful Resources

Use your very own personalized quit plan to successfully quit tobacco for good. Access free gum, patches, lozenges, free or low-cost prescription medications, trained Quit Coaches and other 24/7 support and tools. This resource triples your chances of permanently kicking tobacco.