$72.7 Billion: Smoking's Annual Health Care Cost

The total cost of caring for people with health problems caused by cigarette smoking is about $72.7 billion per year, according to health economists at the University of California. "You expect a figure of this magnitude for the impact of smoking on health care, when you consider that one in five deaths per year is due to cigarette use," said the study's author. Smoking accounted for 11.8 percent of all medical expenditures in the U.S.