on smoking

A quick question for everyone out there trying (or wanting) to quit smoking: why would you not at least just switch to nicotine patches full-time? From a pure health perspective, smoking is a weird habit, because the actual chemically addictive agent (nicotine) is actually … not all that bad for you by itself. So I’m assuming it’s either a matter of cost or some external factors (habit, socialization, oral fixation, etc).

From a pure cost basis, one 21 mg 24 hour nicotine patch is around $2. Cigarettes, by comparison, are around $5/pack (highly localized and ever-increasing, but let’s use this for now). A pack has 20 cigarettes, and each cigarette has around 0.7mg of nicotine. So, you’d have to smoke around 30 cigarettes to get the nicotine of one 21 mg 24hr patch – around a pack and a half, so $7.50 – let’s say $8. So, cigarettes are 4 times more expensive? Did I do the math right?

Regardless, it seems clear that the patch delivery mechanism is waaaaay cheaper. So, smokers: even if you didn’t intend to stop being addicted to nicotine, why wouldn’t you switch to the patch? Is it the oral fixation? Is it the time-to-bloodstream factor? Obviously inhalation hits your brain way faster than a patch would. If that’s the case, I wonder what the price point comparison to the nicotine vaporizers is. Anyone know how much those are?

What am I missing here?