One data point. In my state if we get a report of a store selling to minors we of course have to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. If we get a report of someone selling loose cigarettes we report them to the NJ Department of the Treasury. They shut the store down the next day.
Those that are selling loosies are reselling at a profit. The initial pack had tax. The profit on the loose cigarettes is not taxed.
I’m not sure if this was confirmed. I have not been following it closely. When I was getting my haircut a little while ago I was reading that the order to clamp down on the selling of loose cigarettes in that neighborhood came directly from the top uniform officer in the city. There were complaints from vendors in the area.
Did they stop? I don’t know I’m not a liquor drinker. But isn’t that a state thing? It could still be going on depending on the state.
In Ontario, I can’t remember ever seeing singles for sale, but packs of 5 or 10 started coming out just after the first of the tax gouges. As well, as the thirty packs. Don’t recall if the thirties were banned , or just poor market, but the starter packs were mostly aimed at weekend smokers, who would only smoke on Friday or Saturday night, but conviently were cheaper for kids who smoked, but perhaps not up to a pack a day yet.
Declan
Maybe I missed something in the OP, but why is selling looseys “stupid”?
Around 1970, my slightly older sister had a job walking the shopping malls handing out four-packs of… Vantage, I think they were. I stole a couple from her shoulder bag and smoked two, I think, before my mother found them under my mattress and threw them away without a word.
Not sure how I ended up being the only non-smoker in the family, but I’m sure as hell glad of it. I seem to lack the addiction gene that caused so many other familiar problems…
Every place I’ve ever seen selling loosies has them in a canister on the counter, while the packs are behind the counter. Also, I used to see some places that weren’t licensed to sell cigarettes selling loosies from a canister on the counter, although I haven’t in a long time. But anyway, I think selling loosies from a container behind the counter isn’t going to be eye-catching, and people won’t be aware that the store has them-- they’re an impulse buy. Unless there’s a big sign that says “We sell single cigarettes-- Please ask,” or something, they won’t sell many from a container kept back with the packs and cartons, and it’s my understanding (I’ve never smoked) that cigarettes go stale, so stores would have to dump unsold loosies every couple of days.
I think the canister on the counter is the issue. It’s probably pretty easy for teenagers to steal a single cigarette when the counter person isn’t looking, especially if they are buying something else, and they ask the cashier to do something that distracts her for a moment. Probably the cashier isn’t aware of exactly how many cigarettes are in the jar.
This is probably how they contribute to teenagers getting hold of cigarettes.
The entry cost to smoking IS prohibitive to young people just trying it out. Letting them have access to loosies, so they can toy around till they are hooked is crazy, if your goal is for fewer people to smoke.
If your goal is to sell lots of cigarettes then by all means mitigating the cost to the initiate until they get addicted is definitely the way to go.
And it’s funny that it’s being endorsed by an adult unable to exert the self discipline to buy a full pack and not smoke them all in three days! You’re an adult and it has this amount of pull over you! But somehow it’s okay to expose young people to such a strong, attractive, addictive substance just to accommodate your convenience?
That line of thinking seems off to me.
Back in my day, teenagers bought their cigarettes from vending machines - nothing beat a machine for “don’t ask, don’t tell”. Do they still have those?
I think they’re banned from places accessible to minors. Within the last decade, I’ve seen them in bars, but nowhere else.
I haven’t seen a cigarette vending machine in ages.
Apropos of nothing, one time when I worked at a gas station we had to inventory individual cigarettes (we didn’t sell them as individuals, only packs and cartons). It was really odd and only the one time.
I’m not clear on what you’re saying here.
If the loose cigarettes came from a regular pack, then wasn’t the tax paid on them already? Let’s say you’re in NY and you’re paying our very high cigarette tax of $4.35 a pack. That works out to 21.75 cents a cigarette.
Let’s say you’re in Manhattan and you’re paying the standard $12.85 (seriously). That works out to 64.25 cents a cigarette. I’m assuming that price includes the tax.
I don’t know what the mark-up is on loose cigarettes but let’s say they sell for a dollar apiece. You go out and scrounge up some empty soda cans and go to buy a cigarette. Regardless of whether you’re buying a pack or a single cigarette, wouldn’t you be charged the same 8.875% sales tax? $13.99 for a pack or $1.09 for a single?
I’m with you here. Tobacco tax is a front-end tax. The distributor has to stamp the packs of cigarettes before he distributes them.
I think it’s purely technical, but when a store opens a pack and create loosies, it creates a new product, that then has to be re-taxed. It’s just like a store opening a box of candy bars in order to sell them individually. The store paid tax to the wholesaler for the carton full of boxes of candy bars, but that doesn’t mean that you can argue that the tax has already been paid, and therefore, you should not have to pay tax when you buy the individual bar.
What has to happen, for tax purposes, is that the store buys the pack, with taxes, then opens it up and puts the individual cigs in a jar, or whatever, and prices them at whatever is required for them to make a profit (unless this is a loss leader), and then when they are sold, charges tax on each one.
Which may be the rub-- there may not be a way to ring up tax on a loosie, because UPC symbols on packs automatically ring up the cigarette tax, but there’s no way to ring up anything but sales tax on a loosie, and at any rate, no way to determine if anything but regular sales tax ought to be charged, since the store is going to pass on the special tax in the price. Should it be charged twice, or just the sales tax? Rather then sending this to the legislature, it’s easier to ban loosies.
There is also an issue I just thought of, which is that loosies are not packaged. You can’t sell other types of consumables individually, without individual wrapping. I know there is some kind of cigarillo (a thing that is shaped like a cigarette, but is a little longer, and has a plastic tip, and is the color of a cigar) that can be bought individually, and is wrapped in plastic.
If loosies are that popular, then maybe cigarette companies need to pick up on it, and package cigarettes individually.
Really, when you think about it, someone could do any kind of tampering with a loose cigarette, or just handled it with dirty hands (say, someone with hepatitis, who went to the bathroom, and then didn’t handwash carefully, or someone with a cold who coughed or sneezed on them). That alone is a good enough reason for banning them. Come to think of it, Eww.
Wow. Talk about taking the argument off a cliff, in a train, with a fox.
The tax issue is confused nonsense. Cigarettes are not sold by the unit at any level above the individual retailer. Excise taxes are paid by the distributor and are the same whether the retailer sells unbroken packs or loosies.
Sales tax is the same in either case - any retailer can sell counter items without ringing them up, if they choose to do so, and many probably do. It’s irrelevant that loosies don’t have a bar code for automated sales… a fussy retailer could create a barcode label like many stores use for bulk or unlabeled item sales. There is nothing special about the sales or tax issues with sales of loosies vs sales of packs. At least, not up against the hundred other things that can be broken out of sales packs and sold individually - candy, Twinkies, Slim Jims, keychains, bottle openers, condoms, whatever.
Sanitation? Maybe an issue, but plenty of convenience stores sell food items and the handling is often pretty casual - they certainly don’t run back to wash their hands in between taking bum-pissed money and handing over a pizza slice or hot dog.
There are valid reasons not to sell loose cigarettes, almost entirely dealing with accessibility to minors and throwing up a barrier to becoming addicted through trivial steps. But making mountains of hay over tax, sales-process and sanitation issues is just absurd. You might as well insist people keep their front bumpers sterile so they don’t infect anyone they hit.
Cash registers with scanners also have number buttons so the price could also just be typed into the machine under a cigarette button. They don’t have to have a bar/UPC code.
If folks in NYC are actually paying the retail price for smokes, then there is something seriously wrong with the market down there. I can see the state and the municipality charging what ever they like, but with the amount of states and no real borders ajacent to the big apple, they should not be paying more than 4 bucks a pack.
Declan
So you support banning the sale of individual donuts? What about the bulk bins in grocery stores?
You’re confusing excise taxes and sales taxes. Sales tax is collected at the cash register. Excise tax is collected at the wholesale level. Cigarette tax is usually based on the hundred count (IIRC) so the tax is the same per cigarette, even if shipping containers, crates, cases, cartons, or packs are broken up. Wholesalers sell cigarettes to retailers by the carton. From your theory, when the retailer opens the carton to sell individual packs, they have to be retaxed–this simply isn’t so.
If they sold single cigs I would buy them for when I am boozing heavy. Nothing like ripping a fag when plastered. Most likely best they don’t, one is easier to break down and buy than a pack!
I don’t buy cigarettes, so I don’t know all the ins and outs of how they are taxed, but I have lived in New York City, and I know that how they are taxed there is very complicated. For a while, you couldn’t open a newspaper without another article about a tweak in the cigarette tax law. I also know that trying to bring cigarettes in from out of state is frowned upon. If you get caught doing so with enough of them that the authorities suspect resale, even just to your friends, you can get in trouble. According to one friend of mine, getting a prescription for narcotics filled is less of a hassle than buying cigarettes in NYC. Again, I have no personal experience.
NYC has been working very hard to restrict smoking through legislature, and the real answer is probably “this is just one more example of that.” But I think that any legislator worth his salt can come up with other reasons all day before admitting to this. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, in my opinion. I hate the smell of cigarettes, and a room full of stale ashtrays makes my skin start to burn and my eyes water, even if no one is actually smoking. I’m probably allergic.
They’re getting pretty restrictive in Indiana too, though.
First of all, driving to another state to buy a pack of smokes is kind of inconvenient (figure in gas/subway cost, to start with). Buying multiple packs is expensive, and if you aren’t going to smoke 'em down, they do go stale.
So let’s see, we’ve got:
New York: $14.50 ($4.35 state excise, $1.60 NYC excise)
New Jersey: $8.55
Connecticut: $9.30
Massachusetts: $8.90
Pennsylvania: $7.00
Virginia: $6.00
So how far should a New Yawk smoker drive to save a couple bucks a pack, and where are you seeing coffin nails for $4 if even in tobacco country they’re $5-6?