epilogue

Amol Hatwar’s perspectives on art, culture, business, science and technology

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 little calculation is in order:

Number of Years Weeks in a Year Packets a Week Cost of a packet Total Cost
10 X 52 X 4 X 90 = 187,200

If one neglects the obvious health costs, the amount is easily equivalent to US$ 2000, which in India is sufficient to:

  1. Lavishly feed 125 people for a month
  2. Feed and educate 15 children for a year
  3. Fund the entire capital for a small business

Think, I’ve said enough. Time to stop smoking now…

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    Categorized as Miscellany

    2 Comments

    1. Man, you are rich!! Did you stop it? Actually? Really?

    2. Yes. I’ve quit. Actually and really :o )

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