I hear the price of cigarettes has gone up again.
How high would it have to be to stop you from buying?
My thoughts are, its so addictive, they can raise it as much as they want and folks wouldn’t be able to stop buying.
Would you?
Here in the UK, a pack of 20 cigarettes cost over 4 pounds (about $7 - the same as the price has just gone up to in NY IIRC). Apparently, you can get heroin over here for about 5 pounds.
I seriously think that, within a few years, we’ll be reading stories in the newspapers about smokers mugging people to get the cash for a fix.
For all the smug non-smokers who think this is a great idea - I would agree as long as they raise the taxes for french fries for fat people (heart disease and space on airline seats) and they should also increase tax on booze (DUI’s, heart problems, obnoxiousness) and they should also start to tax Pampers (horrible unecological non-biodegradable landfill mess) and aftershave/perfume (air pollutant for anybody within a 20 foot radius) and SUV’s (gas swilling hogs) and…
All I can say is “HA HA HA HA HA!!! Take that, you dirty smokers!!!”
Lottos and Cigarettes: Taxation on stupidity?
Oh boy not another smoking thread.
I will not even go in to this with anyone, but i am fed up with taxing ciggs. Just wait till you have a few 100 million people going through withdraw…it will not be pretty…watch out non smokers we will be coming for you.
Dennis Leary:
The same could be said of the price. IMO many smokers would sell the family jewels, cash in their kid’s college plans, whatever it would take to feed their addiction.
Any caffeine-heads want to bet about how much you’d pay for a cuppa joe?
We already see that… people pay $4 at Starbucks and the like for a 15 minute beverage. At least a pack of smokes can last almost a day, right? 
Oh well, at least by drinking coffee you’re not giving your kids or others around you cancer.
I give this another 4 posts until it hits the pit.
The funny thing is, those cigarettes already existed when Leary thought of that joke. And it’s Denis, not Dennis. 
Funny thing is I asked in GQ a while back a relevant question.
If all the smokers woke up and screamed no more! Every smoker in the world were to quit. What kind of repercussions state and local goverments would feel?
Lets face it, if we price cigarettes to high everybodys taxes will go up to make up for lost revenue.
regretfully, no one was able to (In the GQ thread) come up with exactly how much money is already made on tobacco taxes.
For what it’s worth. I ran into 7-11 tonight to get my nasty habits and the price actually went down a nickel per pack.
Guess I should run to the cigarette store and buy a few cartons before the local distributor realizes that they actually LOWERED the price.
As for them going up dramatically, I would probably quit. There’s just only so much I will pay to support my nasty habit. Right now, at 7-11 I pay $2.50 a pack for my cancer sticks.
But that shouldn’t drive anyone to raise the pricing. We smokers die early relieving a lot of SS monies for those that don’t smoke. Yeah, initially, we cost more but over all we damned smokers contribute quite a bit to the local, state and federal tax revenue.
Gotta drive to get our smokes so that extra trip to get our smokes for our fix when we run out costs us money in gas. The taxes that we pay, not sure of the exact amount, per pack varies per state. Our health insurance is higher. In some cases our home/renter’s insurance is higher. We die sooner so we’ve already paid and then some. So in actuality, we aren’t the liablility that others think we are.
Oh and the farmers and the workers of those tobacco farms, we support them, their families and possibly (in some instances) their little towns. We support advertising agencies (not so much anymore) but they still have to create pretty packaging and find ways around the laws. The packaging companies must help create those packages. The drivers of the…it goes on. I could name a million more benefits to society even though us smokers are looked upon as horrible beings quite often but it does put money into the stream.
Of course that’s just my opinion. 
Cigarette prices have been going up and up and up for YEARS in Australia, and as far as I know its done diddly-squat in terms of reducing the smoking population. I only know of one woman who gave up because the cost became prohibitive.
I don’t have figures though, and I can’t be bothered looking. I could be wrong.
I went from smoking ‘tailor-mades’ to rolling my own; I used to spend $160 a month on cigarettes and I now spend $50 a month on tobacco.
I’ll never quit, if for no other reason than sheer spite! 
Here [in holland] they’ve put ** Smoking is Deadly** on the packages.
imho; They couldn’t have put up a better ad. Especially for young people. * Hey man, cool, living dangerous! *
I agree with Tsubaki about how raising the prices in Australia did little to encourage people to quit. People talked about quitting, now that they were so expensive, but continued sucking them down their lungs.
They are currently around $9.00 for a pack of 25’s. When I quit a year and a half ago, they were around $7.00. Mr Goo has just quit, and agrees that he would’ve paid double that, when he was addicted, to get his fix. It’s an addiction, so of course people will go without things and go to extreme lengths to satisfy the craving. All smokers know exactly what they are doing to their lungs in Australia, thanks to some graphic ads, yet they continue. An extra dollar a pack each year is not going to change a thing, IMO.
My father did this when he could no longer really afford to buy cigarettes in packs. He would pick up a big carton of filter-tube thingies and a couple pots of tobacco. He got a little, plastic “cigarette stuffer machine” and in about the same amount of time that it would have taken him to walk to the corner store, he’d have a new batch. He held on to an old carton and just refilled it with his home-stuffed cigs.
Much cheaper than buying cartons.
He died of throat cancer.
my sentiments, exactly.
Its scary when people agree with me…
Jesus was in a coma.
My father started smoking at 13; he smoked cigarettes, cigars and pipe tobacco and took snuff for the next 60 years. He died of bladder cancer (man never could hold his urine). My grandmother started smoking at 20 and smoked two packs of unfiltered Camels until the day she died–of pneumonia, at 88.
Smug non-smokers? tax on french fries? drinking?
The difference between smoking and most other vices (and the reason why I think we smug non-smokers have a right to despise the act of smoking) is this.
eating fries doesn’t make people near you fat. drinking alcohol doesn’t make people near you drunk, but smoking does damage the lungs of people near you!
And why should I get up and move somewhere if some dirty old hag sits into the seat next to mine and lights up? spreading the vile exhaust to all the people around her!
I fucking hate that attitude that some smokers have - there was this pretentius gossip show just for women where they were talking about smoking. one told a story where she was in a restraunt , someone came up to her and said “would you mind not smoking near us?” to which she replied “would you mind not eating near me” … and she expected praise for such wit?? well the other thoughtless presenters of the show gave her praise. but she doesn’t fucking deserve it - eating isn’t a foul disgusting spreading habit. it is a necesity. think for one second woman before you say something deeply stupid and thoughtless as - “would you mind not eating near me” to people who ask you not to polute their air with your crap habit.
what makes it worse is - this was in a restraunt, where people are , like, supposed to be , er, eating!