Poor smokers in NY spend quarter of income on cigarettes: study

Poor smokers in New York State spend about a quarter of their entire income on cigarettes, nearly twice as much as the national average for low-income smokers, according to a new study.

The study, conducted by the non-profit research group RTI on behalf of the state's health department, found there was no statistically significant decline in the prevalence of smoking among poorer New Yorkers between 2003 and 2010, even as the habit declined by about 20 percent among all income groups.

"Although high cigarette taxes are an effective method for reducing cigarette smoking, they can impose a significant financial burden on low-income smokers," Matthew Farrelly and his co-authors wrote in the conclusion of their paper, which was published this month in Plos One, an online, peer-reviewed journal.

Using data from the state health department's New York Adult Tobacco Survey, researchers calculated that smokers in New York earning less than $30,000 a year spent an average of 23.6 percent of their earnings on cigarettes, compared with about 14.2 percent nationally.

The state's wealthier smokers - those earning over $60,000 - spent an average of 2.2 percent of their income on the habit, about the same as the national figure.

New York has the highest state cigarette tax in the nation, at $4.35 a carton, compared with a national average of $1.46. New York City imposes an additional $1.50 tax. The researchers said they did not have enough data to measure whether city residents were shelling out an even larger portion of their earnings on cigarettes.

11 Facts About Teen Smoking

More than 80 percent of smokers begin before the age of 18.

Despite federal warnings about tobacco, nearly one in four high school seniors and one in three young adults under age 26 smoke.

Each day, 3,000 teenagers begin smoking; nearly 1,000 die as a result.

396,000 smokers who started as teens die each year from smoking related diseases.

Adolescents are 13 times more likely to smoke if their peers do.

If both parents smoke, adolescents are more than twice as likely to smoke than adolescents with non-smoking parents.

A teen that starts smoking at age 13 will have a more difficult time quitting, have more health-related problems, and will die earlier than a person who begins to smoke at age 21.

One out of five teenagers who are addicted to cigarettes smoke 13 to 15 a day.

According to the Surgeon's General, teenagers who smoke are three times more likely to use alcohol, eight times more likely to smoke marijuana, and 22 times more likely to use cocaine.