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That's what I thought too. Perhaps people embellish (for whatever reason) how much they smoke but I hear people always saying how they used to smoke 3 packs per day. I imagine you'd have to spend the majority of your day smoking if you smoke that many.
Yeah, that's 60 cigarettes in a day. I usually hear people referring to a pack-a-day habit, which seems more reasonable.
I had a relative, since deceased, that smoked in excess of 2 packs per day for 40+ years. I do believe that many of those smokes were lit and then forgotten in an ashtray or worse on the edge of a counter in a bathroom or kitchen. I can attest to that by the total amount of burn marks in floors, countertops, tables, and chairs around the house when we cleaned it up for sale. It is habit forming just as much for the handling of the cigarette as for the nicotine.
My dad smoked for over 50 years, then was forced to quit for several weeks because of a bladder surgery, and managed to stay off them for the rest of his life. I wish he'd quit a lot sooner, but he did live until 91 with a sound mind right to the end, though his body was falling apart the last 5 years. Anyway, that's a lot of money down the drain, or down the lungs in this case.
Maybe New Yorkers will decide to tax the heck out of vaping, which of course will encourage even more bootlegging of cigarettes.
Imagine those NYers who smoke 3 packs per day. They are now out $14,000 per year in smokes. Talk about up in smoke!
True...but anyone smoking a pack or more a day is likely buying cartons at somewhat of a "discount" but still a lot of money!
I know people who were in Missouri for the recent eclipse - their state tax per pack is the cheapest in the country - $0.17 or something. Cartons of the off-brands could be had for $22 - people were stocking up getting 10-20 and more cartons.
If I were a neighboring state, particularly New Jersey, I'd quickly lower the tax and reap the profits. Hoboken is just across the water! And I've long known New Yorkers have gone to PA/Philadelphia to stock up and return to NYC.
I'm oblivious to cigarette pack increases, as I buy the one pound bags of light cigar tobacco @ $18 a bag, which nets me a cigarette pack @ $2.25 a pack. I buy the box of 200 empty filtered cigarettes, dry a bag on a cookie sheet, crush it up, sift it into the tubes, 4 at a time! And, given it's the real McCoy tobacco, sans tar, the taste is so much tastier than store-bought cancer sticks. Any number of people overlook the huge number of Roll-Your-Own'ers!
And, yes, you can always buy online!
NV stupidly raised its cigarette tax to match AZ's and CA's, and we lost out on untold amounts of tax revenue as a result of it. Add to that all the tourists who come to Las Vegas from states with high tobacco taxes, we lost big time being stupid.
There is a point, when taxing recreational drugs (and tobacco supplies its users with nicotine, a recreational drug) becomes counterproductive. Organized criminals quickly learn that the illegal importation of non-taxed cigarettes is lucrative enough to warrant the risk of arrest (likely) and prosecution (less likely).
It will be interesting to see the result of such draconian prices increases on chemical products desired by significant numbers of the New York City population.
Rich
(41 years in law enforcement, 20 of them in the NYPD)
This will be a boon to the illegal cigarette cartels.
CREATE CRIME, that's what this does.
So, it's either intentional--meaning People In High Places have significant criminal connections--or it's due to stupidity, ignorance, and the inability to learn anything at all from past experience.
I don't think raising the price is going to have a positive impact. People who are addicted will do what they have to do to feed their addiction.
Cigarette sales won't go down (if you count those from other areas), but people will have less money to spend on stuff like food, childcare, doctors.
You would need to make the cigarettes harder to get--ban sales, require a prescription (incurring a lecture from a doctor), limit the number you can buy per month --but they'll still be available on the black market and from ciggy pushers.
Perhaps supplying free nic patches would help, too.
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