Understanding how much smoking costs

How much does the smoking habit cost the British people? Nicotinell, who provide a wide range of products to help people quit smoking have carried out the research below to find out…

Background data for the research

This research has been based around the Office for National Statistics Adult Smoking Habits in the UK: 2016 report and the fact that this showed the average daily cigarette consumption for women was at 11 cigarettes a day and for men it was 12. Over a year, these figures work out at 4,380 cigarettes for men and 4,015 cigarettes for women.

From this, we have selected the leading cigarettes brands in the UK in 2016 by sales value, as discovered by 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
  6. Players — £718 million
  7. John Player Special — £677 million
  8. Carlton — £541 million
  9. Silk Cut — £504 million
  10. Windsor — £462 million*

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

Next, we worked out the mean value of the price charged by the UK’s 4 biggest supermarkets of the most popular 20-pack box of cigarettes from each cigarette brand. 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%

Priced and charted in terms of 20-pack box of cigarettes popularity by mysupermarket.co.uk as of November 1st 2017 are shown below:

  • 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 above data, we can calculate the how much the average British male and female can expect to spend per year on cigarettes.

How much is the average Great British smoker spending on cigarettes per year?

Cigarette product Avg. expenditure by men per year** Avg. expenditure by women per year**
Sterling Dual King Size £1,804.56 £1,656.24
Mayfair White King Size £1,946.91 £1,786.89
Lambert & Butler Original Silver King Size £1,946.91 £1,786.89
Marlboro Gold King Size £2,268.84 £2,082.36
Richmond Bright Blue Superkings £1,946.91 £1,786.89
John Player Special Bright Blue Superkings £1,609.65 £1,477.35
Carlton Superkings Red £1,609.65 £1,477.35
Silk Cut King Size Silver £2,334.54 £2,142.66
Windsor Blue JPS Superking Green £1,727.91 £1,585.89
Avg. expenditure across all products researched £1,910.65 £1,753.61

**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.

Putting the average expenditure into context

If the average expenditure figures across the products that were researched doesn’t seem high enough in themselves take a look at how much it compares to these popular purchases in cost:

  • 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.