IS VAPING CHEAPER THAN SMOKING?
Vaping is certainly cheaper than smoking. The equivalent amount of nicotine from a cigarette to E-Cigarettes is roughly one twentieth of a 2.0% E-Cigarette refill. This means, in the UK, you are paying around 10p for the same nicotine you get from 1 cigarette in an E-Cigarette refill, compared with an average price of 63p per cigarette. A heavy smoker can expect to save around £2,700 per year with E-Cigarettes!
INTRODUCTION
Beware: spoilers! The answer to ‘is vaping cheaper than smoking’ is a resounding YES!
It is probably the second most important benefit of electronic cigarettes that it is significantly cheaper to vape compared to smoking cigarettes. Yes, there are plenty of variables, and if you tried really hard you may be able to spend almost as much money on vaping as you would smoking. But I do mean really hard.
It’s easy to think of the ‘cost’ as being purely financial, but the health and social costs of smoking indicate that the individual, and society, pay for smoking in ways other than cash.
WHY ARE PEOPLE SWITCHING FROM SMOKING TO VAPING
The damage done to the body from smoking is well documented, and it is estimated that over 7 million deaths per year occur worldwide as a direct result of tobacco use.
Public Health England reviewed evidence on e-cigarettes and concluded that they are at least 95% less harmful than traditional cigarettes - so reason number one for people making the switch to vaping is that it is less harmful to your health.
The levels of toxins in e-cigarettes are massively reduced compared with tobacco products, and chemicals added to cigarettes that increase the bioavailability of nicotine are not present in e-liquid; this is one of the reasons why vaping doesn’t fill up the nicotine receptors in the brain as much as smoking a cigarette.
In addition to the reduced harm, the monetary cost of vaping is but a fraction of the cost of smoking a twenty pack of cigarettes per day. Whichever way you spin it, vaping is a huge step in the right direction - you really can’t argue with that!
HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO SMOKE CIGARETTES?
How much does an average smoker spend on cigarettes
Don’t believe that vaping is cheaper than smoking? Time for some maths!
The cheapest pack of 20 cigarettes in the UK costs £9.41. That means, at its cheapest, a single cigarette will cost 47p. This means that someone smoking ten cigarettes per day will be spending £4.70 per day at the very least. This will translate to approximately £141 per month, or £1,715.50 per year!
However, the average cost of a pack of cigarettes in the UK is now £12! So for a pack-a-day smoker, you could be spending upwards of £360 every month or £4,380 every year!!
How much does a heavy smoker/chain smoker spend on cigarettes?
Now for the eye watering numbers - a heavy smoker getting through the cheapest pack of 20 cigarettes per day will be spending £9.40 per day, roughly £282 per month, totalling £3,431 per year!
The reality is that the true cost of smoking doesn’t stop at the financial. The health problems that can arise from smoking are another cost that will impact your quality of life, as well as lead to other financial costs this incurs, like medical bills and lost earnings.
A huge variety of chronic conditions are made worse by smoking, and many are brought on by years of cigarette consumption. Conditions like Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) impact the lungs and make breathing difficult - smoking increases the risk of COPD and many other conditions like rheumatoid arthritis.
These are a cost to your health that you will be paying for the rest of your life - a very high price indeed.
Is vaping cheaper than smoking?
Comparing smoking to vaping, there is no contest, financially speaking. The initial cost of some vape starter kits may seem like a large outlay, but within no time you will be back in the black (cue the AC/DC music).
A simple vape kit - like the SMOKO E-cigarette or VAPE POD system - that uses pre filled refills, are inexpensive to get started on and low cost to keep going. Starter kits for these units are going to come in at under £20, but starter kit bundles that include refills will have you saving money straight off the mark.
How often do you need to buy a new vape kit
There are a lot of different vape kits lining the shelves of vape shops across the country, from the cigalike devices to refillable vape pens and powerful box mods. At SMOKO, our experience tells us that smoker’s looking to make the switch to vaping want a simple device that provides a smoking sensation in a tobacco flavour.
Starting on a cigalike device means that you are only concerned with buying refills and batteries to keep yourself vaping. Cigalike batteries could last for approximately three months before they need to be replaced, and it’s always worth keeping a spare - so you may be able to survive the whole year on eight batteries!
The more complex vape kits will require more maintenance, and spare parts. The pod mods, complex vape pens and box mods all use replaceable coils, which is another cost to factor in. You’ll need a spare tank, too, just in case!
The problem with the larger, more complex devices is that they will take up more of your time. The replaceable parts need to be inspected on a regular basis to ensure the device is safe for use.
A compromised lithium ion battery could, in the worst case, explode. A degraded coil could lead to a funny taste when you vape, and potentially leach metal into your e-liquid - something we do not want. Another potential cost to your health if you aren’t vigilant with maintaining the device.
Smoking vs vaping : Cost comparison
Starting up with the SMOKO E-cigarette, a single refill costs £2 at most, and if a heavy smoker gets through a single refill per day this would work out to cost £730 per year.
So - a heavy smoker will spend at least £3,431 on cigarettes, compared to a meagre £730 per year if they were to switch to vaping. That’s a saving of £2,701!
Even a ‘ten cigs per day’ smoker switching over to vaping a refill per day will save almost a thousand pounds per year! Chances are, a ‘light’ smoker smoking ten cigarettes per day won’t use a whole refill per day - though the nicotine strength of the e-liquid will play a role in how quickly it is consumed.
Now remember we chose the cheapest cigarettes, so the savings will be even bigger if you have a taste for the more expensive cigarettes on the market!
The differences in vape devices, our own vaping technique, and strength of e-liquid can all impact how quickly a vaper will use up their e-liquid. Naturally, using more e-liquid or refills means buying more over the course of the year, but your margin for savings here is so large that you could double the amount of e-liquid you get through and still save money as both a ‘10 per day’ and ‘20 per day’ smoker.
IS VAPING CHEAPER THAN SMOKING? CONCLUSION
There is no doubt that vaping is cheaper than smoking. That’s two monumental reasons you now have to stop smoking and switch to vaping: numero uno is your health, number two is the huge amount of money you can save!
It’s understandable that many smokers out there may see that switching to vaping is just a change of nicotine products, but it is so much more than that. It is much less harmful than smoking, it is significantly cheaper, it has much less impact on those around you - it isn’t just about quitting smoking, it’s about taking your life back!
If taking your life back sounds like something you need to do as a smoker, then don’t hesitate - pick up the UK’s premium e-cigarette and start vaping our UK made e-liquids today!
