Are you choking now?
News has it that man in the United States popped out to his local petrol station to buy a pack of cigarettes - only to find his card charged $23,148,855,308,184,500. Thats 23 quadrillion, several times the US national debt. After a few phone calls to Bank of America, everything was back to normal.
Besides the incident, using a credit card to buy a packet of cigarettes is laughable as it is; but, it did set me thinking about the real costs of smoking. I’ve been a nicotine junkie for over 10 years now, give or take a few months. I roughly averaged four packets a week. A small back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that I must have put just about INR 1,87,000 in smoke!
If one neglects the obvious health costs, the amount is easily equivalent to US$ 2000, which in India is sufficient to:
- Lavishly feed 125 people for a months
- Feed and educate 15 children for a years
- Fund the entire capital for a small business
Think, I’ve said enough. Time to stop smoking now…