# Fuck Cigarette Prices!!!!! **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [May 17, 2002, 6:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-cigarette-prices/109507 "2002-05-17T06:21:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Bad\_News\_Baboon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/5fc32e/32.png) [@Bad\_News\_Baboon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bad_News_Baboon)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2002, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-cigarette-prices/109507/41 "2002-05-17T19:40:54Z")
thanks for the info **andros**. I don’t drink much so I wasn’t aware of the taxes. So to be sure I understand: each six pack only gets approximately 18 cents in tax? I am estimating that one six pack is, give or take, a gallon. I just don’t see how our government can tax one at a high rate but not the other. ---
**Author:** ![PhiloVance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e19adc/32.png) [@PhiloVance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhiloVance)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2002, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-cigarette-prices/109507/42 "2002-05-17T19:43:08Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by S. Mussberger \* > \*\*The cost of smoking is quite a handful for the society nowdays. A LOT of money and human suffering. If you ask me a pack of cigarettes should be three times the cost of what they are today. \*\* :eek::eek::eek: Betcha anything, the above poster doesn’t smoke. 😃 **baltotop** , I think you just met a real militant non-smoker. yosemitebabe is a wimp by comparison. ---
**Author:** ![Tiburon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e36b37/32.png) [@Tiburon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tiburon)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2002, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-cigarette-prices/109507/43 "2002-05-17T19:43:38Z")
A carton of Marlboro’s is $27.99 here (central Illinois). The most I have ever paid is around $37 and that pissed me off. Was I pissed off at the price? No, I was pissed off at my damn self for smoking. I am an on and off smoker that goes a month without smoking and then smokes daily for a month, on and off and on and off. Well, I want to make the leap to a complete non-smoker and while it isn’t exactly the expense that pisses me off, it’s more like the fact that I have such a stupid habit that basically flushes $$ down the drain at the expense of my lungs. Besides, there is this ad on television that scares me. This woman says something like, “If the woman you’ll be in 20 years could speak to you now…she’d say ‘take care of yourself.’” Man, that is true. It’s been 2 days now - hell, I’m gettin’ there. Tibs. ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2002, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-cigarette-prices/109507/44 "2002-05-17T20:08:37Z")
That’s fine. You can take away my video games, too. After all, they use electricity that is generated through pollution. My computer? Bah. Who needs it? Eats up juice and places a burden on society, forcing power companies to produce more pollution. Food? Better raise taxes there, because what comes out of all of our asses is toxic as hell. I think we should impliment a shit-tax. **Fucking brilliant**. I’m sorry, stay the fuck out of my habit. You don’t want me smoking in public? Ok, whatever. Still think it is bullshit, but ewhatever. You want to sue the companies that make cigarettes for lying about their affects? Sure, I can buy that. Shame I don’t see a dime of that settlement, but whatever. But leave me the fuck alone already. This is utter **bullshit**. Places an economic burden upon the state? Fucking sing it to somebody else. The government _was already_ making between .50 and .75 off of every dollar for cigarettes. And that’s a multi-billion dollar industry. Burden my ass. **If insurance companies charged rates like this they’d go out of business**. And they do raise rates for smokers, don’t they? Fucking _homeless people_ are a burden on society. Maybe we should fucking tax them, too. Garbage, hogwash, balderdash, and bullshit. Un-fucking-refined. > [@](#): > > Neither Governor Glendening nor President Clinton seems able to break his addiction to cigarette taxes. Smokers had better have a vise grip on their wallets. Excise taxes on each pack are already 60 cents, split between the feds and Maryland, with a 15-cent federal kicker coming soon. Add 45 cents to pay for the states’ tobacco settlement, 55 cents in Clinton’s upcoming budget, and $1.00 just proposed by Glendening. The total, $2.75 per pack… Oh yes, the $2.75 doesn’t include still more booty to be extorted from the tobacco companies when the Department of Justice crystallizes its litigation plan, which Clinton announced in his State-of-the-Union Address. [http://www.cato.org/dailys/03-15-99b.html](http://www.cato.org/dailys/03-15-99b.html) An older article, that. > [@](#): > > Federal and state excise taxes on cigarettes already generate more than $13 billion in annual revenue – far more than the smoking-related costs paid out of public coffers. **So get off my fucking back, Uncle Sam**. Find some other god damn whipping boy. ---
**Author:** ![musicguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ba0ec/32.png) [@musicguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/musicguy)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2002, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-cigarette-prices/109507/45 "2002-05-17T20:17:03Z")
[Hiking Cigarette Taxes Is Good for (Illegal) Business](http://www.forces.org/articles/files/nytimes.htm) Just another perspective on the effects of overtaxing. Prop 10, the brainchild of Rob “meathead” Reiner, added 50 cents to a pack in California “for the children”. He also favors making smoking in a private vehicle illegal. Here is an[interesting article](http://www.independent.org/tii/news/000206Shughart.html) that explains some of the problems with this proposition and this way of thinking in general. > [@](#): > > Many people assume that smokers require more health care than nonsmokers. But, stop the presses: we all get sick, have medical expenses, and eventually die whether we smoke or not. Hence, while smoking can affect the timing of health care expenditures, it doesn’t follow that smokers’ lifetime medical bills are larger than those of nonsmokers. In fact, the opposite is more likely to be true. If nonsmokers live longer than smokers, then it is they who will have the largest health care costs over their lifetimes and it is they who will incur most of their medical expenses after the age of 65 when they become eligible for taxpayer subsidies through Medicare. Recognizing this simple point leads to the conclusion that the nation’s health care costs would increase if everyone stopped smoking. > > Because they don’t live as long, smokers also collect less Social Security than nonsmokers. That represents a saving to the federal government and is another subsidy to nonsmoking taxpayers. While it may seem ghoulish to argue that taxpayers gain from smokers dying before they become eligible for Medicare or before receiving their full Social Security benefits, advocates of higher taxes on smokers in order to defray the costs of treating smoking-related disease cannot have it both ways. If the tobacco industry’s critics want to base their case on the lower life expectancy of smokers, they must also acknowledge the subsidies shorter lives entail. > > The blunt truth, according to The Economist, is that smokers for the most part die near the end of the productive years of their lives, after they have made full contributions to publicly financed health care and pension schemes. But it kills them before they live long enough to place too heavy a burden on those schemes. The result: “smoking is good for your health spending.” Just thought I would throw some alternative opinions out there ---
**Author:** ![Syzygy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bc79bd/32.png) [@Syzygy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Syzygy)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2002, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-cigarette-prices/109507/46 "2002-05-17T21:53:23Z")
A couple of months ago, I went to a friend’s house. He’s been a smoker for many years (as long as I’ve known him). This last visit, he pulls out this pack of cigarettes, all but unlabelled except for a big “cigarettes” across the front and the surgeon general’s warning. He looks at me as he pulls a cig out, shows me the box and says, “See what I’m being reduced to? They got me, they really do.” Two weeks later, he quit. I haven’t seen him have a cigarette since. He says he feels great now, even though it was really tough to just quit like that. Maybe these taxes aren’t such a bad idea. I don’t smoke or drink, so those taxes don’t affect me, but if they started hypertaxing take-out food, maybe I’d get into shape. If they started hypertaxing DVDs, I’d get outside and be more active. Or, I might start a whiny thread about how much my luxuries cost me. You never know. ---
**Author:** ![lezlers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/258eb7/32.png) [@lezlers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lezlers)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2002, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-cigarette-prices/109507/47 "2002-05-17T22:50:49Z")
I know the raised prices are about 70% of what made me quit about a month ago. I just couldn’t justify spending that much money anymore, it was crazy. I don’t MAKE that much money! I’m glad I quit, I feel much better but I don’t believe anyone should be FORCED into quitting by high taxes. Saying the taxes are to compensate for the economic burden smokers place on society is complete and utter bullshit. See all above references. The only thing that irritates me now is watching my pack a day smoking b/f throw all of his money away on it. I don’t say anything b/c as any smoker knows, that is the most irritating thing on the planet, ESPECIALLY from an X-smoker, but godDAMN. He is barely getting by as it is and spending 5 bucks a day on smokes? Drives me CRAZY!!! ---
**Author:** ![JohnBckWLD](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d6d6ee/32.png) [@JohnBckWLD](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnBckWLD)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2002, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-cigarette-prices/109507/48 "2002-05-18T00:02:05Z")
As alluded to by music, I stopped buying American Cigarrettes 2 years ago and now smoke Winstons purchased from and made by Malaysia. I pay $22 landed & save $30 per carton, hence $30 a week. (BTW, You’re right, NYC pack price on premium brands @ $7.50 and going up again in the summer). As pointed out in Eris’ link, the local and federal governments are totally hypocritical. Phillip Morris and RJR make approximatel 25 cents per pack…Government coffers rake in DOLLARS each. How utterly hypocritical, blaming those mean tobacco companies making a profit off people’s _bad habits_…it’s the Dept’s of taxation and finance tthat are raking in the mother load. Speaking of hypocricy, It’s usually the most militant pro-tobacco tax proponents who favor progressive taxation. Don’t they realize how disproportionatley taxes on smoking affect the poor? A smoker working in a blue collar field more than 1/2 a day to purchase a carton, the upper class, less than 1/2 an hour. ---
**Author:** ![kiz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/7feea3/32.png) [@kiz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kiz)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2002, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-cigarette-prices/109507/49 "2002-05-18T00:38:07Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Tiburon \* > **A carton of Marlboro’s is $27.99 here (central Illinois). The most I have ever paid is around $37 and that pissed me off…** Sheesh…here if you buy a carton in your local friendly supermarket or whatever, they’re around $42…at BJ’s/Costco they’re around $37, the cheapest I’ve found thus far… Massachusetts now has a bill somewhere in the legislature asking the tax be raised to **75 cents** per pack. Now, if the average here for a pack is around $4.50, and if the bill passes, that’ll make the price over $5…:eek: Let me chime in here with my nonwhining rant: Yes, I smoke. Yes, it also pisses me off that cigarettes are the first item chosen for a tax hike. What pisses me off even more is that it’s my state that’s doing this, not the feds. No wonder why we’re known as TAXachusetts, eh, **erislover**? :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2002, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-cigarette-prices/109507/50 "2002-05-18T02:33:27Z")
Indeed. :mad: ---
**Author:** ![rsa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/839c29/32.png) [@rsa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rsa)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2002, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-cigarette-prices/109507/51 "2002-05-18T03:03:38Z")
How timely! I breezed through all the responses because most seemed to be bashing smokers or bitching. Right before I read this thread I just ordered two cartons of Dunhill Lights from a Swiss online site. With priority shipping the cost was about the same or less than one carton of domestic smokes. The site I used has a bonded warehouse so there are no taxes on that end and there is no duty on this end for small purchases. I hope it works out. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2002, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-cigarette-prices/109507/52 "2002-05-18T23:04:06Z")
Yeah those prices are a real killer! I wish I could be more sympathetic, and I do understand the infringement on personal liberty that a heavy tax imposes, but unfortunately I hate cigarette smoke with the passion of 10,000 white hot suns. At restaurants where the smoke does not obey the imaginary force field limits of the “smoking area” and comes wending toward me, invading my nostrils, my clothing and my sinuses it makes me want to beat the smokers over the head with a baseball bat till their brains splatter artistically across the Cajun blackened tuna. As I ponder how the stink from their atmospheric excrement stays in my nose and sinuses for days afterwards I want to grab their smoking heads in both hands and pull it from their wheezing, hacking bodies and look deep into their bulging eyes as I tear the bloody stump of their neck from their shoulders, foul tongues swinging lazily about with the still burning cigarette stuck to the end, perched between their yellow, mottled, nicotine stained teeth with a wisp of smoke escaping the neck hole of the trachea leading deep into the pit of Stygian corruption that is their lungs. [sub]Oops did I say that out loud[/sub]:eek: ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2002, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-cigarette-prices/109507/53 "2002-05-18T23:17:52Z")
Gosh, **Astro** , that’s heavy. I just wish smokers would stop throwing their butts everywhere, especially out of moving cars. The smoking rate among my current patients is less than 1%. Of course, all my patients are in a smoke-free maximum security prison. They’re pretty crabby their first few weeks, then they seem to adapt. I don’t think any of them are in there for buying cigarettes from Malaysia, though. ---
**Author:** ![Barking\_Spider](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9dc877/32.png) [@Barking\_Spider](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barking_Spider)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2002, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-cigarette-prices/109507/54 "2002-05-18T23:18:34Z")
If not for taxes, cigs would be around 50 cents a pack. Another thing is, the Gov. hopes like hell people like you never quit smoking. Tobbacco taxes are a HUGE moneymaker for the government. Not only that, the Gov. would save money even if there were no tobbacco taxes, because smokers die a lot sooner than nonsmokers, thus saving the government tons of money in social security, medicare, and other welfare payments. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2002, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-cigarette-prices/109507/55 "2002-05-19T14:04:29Z")
**barking** , all the evidence I’ve seen indicates that the cost to the government in lost wages, disability, health care subsidization etc. outweighs the money gained. This may not be true in other countries, but in the US it does seem to apply. ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2002, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-cigarette-prices/109507/56 "2002-05-19T15:29:17Z")
**Qadgop** , I’d hate to be a doubter—especially of you—but I’d really like to see some evidence for that. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2002, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-cigarette-prices/109507/57 "2002-05-19T15:42:49Z")
[http://www.cnn.com/2002/HEALTH/04/11/smoking.costs/](http://www.cnn.com/2002/HEALTH/04/11/smoking.costs/) > [@](#): > > Smoking causes an average man to lose more than 13 years of life, and an average woman to lose 14.5 years. > Smoking during pregnancy causes about 1,000 infant deaths each year. This is just the lastest data available from the CDC. I have to say that the $ numbers, both here, and for the so-called “death benefit to society” of smoking are _really, really, really_ slippery. A lot of the figures cited for the financial impact of smoking include lost wages of the smoker, then presume these lost wages must be replaced by the government to the disabled smoker or their survivors. I’m not sure this is a valid assumption. It may be. So in short, there’s a hell of a lot of data out there about the costs of smoking, but the numbers sure ain’t firm. But there’s no doubt smoking is associated with a tremendous amount of morbidity and mortality. If you want to smoke tobacco, just be prepared to pay the price. ---
**Author:** ![kabbes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e99b99/32.png) [@kabbes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kabbes)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2002, 9:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-cigarette-prices/109507/58 "2002-05-20T09:24:06Z")
There is certainly a problem associated with increased _morbidity_ as regards smokers. Sure, everyone dies in the end. But the diseases associated with smoking tend to be more deliberating and longer lasting. This is without doubt a serious cost to society. But as **Qadrop** says, firm figures are hard to establish. Sure smokers have to pay higher life insurance premiums. This is because **they die a lot sooner**. This means less premiums for the insurer and less time to invest the money. On the plus side - and for similar reasons - you should be able to find cheaper annuities, so pensions should be cheaper. Though you may have to prove that 20-a-day habit in order to qualify. pan ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2002, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-cigarette-prices/109507/59 "2002-05-20T14:14:58Z")
Well, let’s not miss any interesting numbers. > [@](#): > > Smoking costs the United States $150 billion each year in health costs and lost productivity… > Researchers found states receive about $16 billion in revenue a year from tobacco companies for lawsuit settlement payments and state tobacco excise taxes… Hmm… 16 billion times 50 states - 150 billion in costs to society. Well, that’s certainly something, isn’t it? ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2002, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-cigarette-prices/109507/60 "2002-05-20T14:16:38Z")
On second thought, I must be reading that wrong, because there’s **no way** that the government gets 800 billion dollars a year from cigarettes! 😃 So, disregard that last post. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-cigarette-prices/109507.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-cigarette-prices/109507.md?page=4)