Do Smokers Know How Much They Spend On Cigarettes?

DailyFinance:

If you think your cigarettes are getting even more expensive, you're right. In the past 10 years, 47 states and the District of Columbia have implemented 105 cigarette tax rate increases. (In contrast, Missouri and North Dakota haven't raised cigarette taxes since 1993, while California last hiked them up in 1999.)

Read the whole story: DailyFinance

Comments

[itssomallory]

02:36 AM on 08/17/2011

I believe smokers will always be paying for their tobacco products no matter how expensive it is or how much higher it's being taxed on. Doesn't anybody get it by now? It is actually their bread and butter, or their only fueling supplies as a source of food alternative. It kind of replaces the natural food source diet. Just imagine, tobacco leaves will be in place of all green vegetables. Like blended in your salads, making tobacco/nicotine pressed juice, drinking tobacco/nicotine tea, mixing tobacco/nicotine smoothies or milkshakes, used as a crushed herbs or minced condiments in recipes, used as medicinal properties, or whatever maybe incorporated into any recipes or whatever. That is how smokers feels and thinks about our regular daily food diet, there are too many food recalls, many food salmonella poisoning, and many other flaws that may arise. I'm only guessing that they believe that tobacco maybe the only alternative to be used for just about anything. That way tobacco will still maintain its unhealthy, doubtful, and controversial status. The smokers want tobacco to be globally used by all and no one be left out of not using the product. To make certain that everyone will be affected by its very disgusting ill effect purposes. GROSS!

[Phreaked]

12:30 PM on 06/23/2011

I quit about 8 months ago, up here in Ontario it went to $10+ a pack, i was spending close to $4000 a year on it for 10 years

I bought a new car and still save some money

[antidemomarxist]

08:23 AM on 06/23/2011

Libs are such hypocrites..the same people that want to ban smoking cigarettes, cigars are supporting the legalization of p ot...

[maxben]

09:54 AM on 06/23/2011

Sure, but does that mean you support the legalization of pot as well so as not to be a hypocrite?

[antidemomarxist]

02:36 PM on 06/23/2011

ITs a moot point. Tobacco has been legal for decades, pot is not.

[Phreaked]

12:29 PM on 06/23/2011

Sorry there is a HUGE difference between Marijuana and tobacco

There is zero reported cancer risk with pot, in fact some studies have shown it has a benefit in prevention, although its a tenuous connection.

Pot is less addictive than alcohol and far less addictive than tobacco

There are no benefits to smoking tobacco, its main ingredients are poisons. It doesn't even "get you high" like pot or drunk like alcohol

There is no possible medical use for tobacco, many for pot

[antidemomarxist]

02:39 PM on 06/23/2011

OK, then where does it end? Once you open the door, other d ru gs will follow.

Gambling started as a revenue generation device for states. Now we have OTB, casino's etc. The societal maintenance costs for this has been huge and costly.

[playsindirt]

08:00 AM on 06/23/2011

I quit almost 30 years ago because I couldn't justify spending almost $1 on a pack of smokes. Yeah, I'm old ....... but not stupid.

[Excalibre]

03:01 PM on 06/23/2011

I quit (for the second time) just over a week ago because I couldn't justify spending almost $7 on a pack of smokes. Which, I suppose, does make me a little stupid.

[foxnewsrulez]

07:36 AM on 06/23/2011

I sure did, quit almost 6 years ago. The money i saved was even doule cause i bought for my gf and myself . when i quit, i quit buying cigs completely., The savings and extra money are amazing and of of many reasons I have no desire to start up again.

[Ann Joyce]

07:18 AM on 06/23/2011

Yes, I just quit in February after 30+ years of smoking.....Even at $25 a week, that's more than a years salary up in smoke

[northstar11]

06:59 AM on 06/23/2011

different tax rates in different jurisdictions lead to all kinds of mischief ----including smuggling and tax evasion

there should be a federally mandated minimum tax ----and all taxes need to be collected before the truck leaves the plant ---

collected by the feds ----and the appropriate amount rebated to each state -----all states will immediately fall into line with the federal minimum or forego the difference.

[adamsandler28]

06:35 AM on 06/23/2011

Even so, roughly One Percent of those who smoke or who are exposed to Second Hand Smoke die each year from it. Something that is causative in producing death really should have a better track record of killing us, shouldn't it? http://bit.ly/ilV091

[gevan]

02:47 AM on 06/23/2011

Every time there is a change in administration in the state, the price has gone up. The one group that Obama raised taxes on was smokers. $600 per month is ridiculous for an item that was around thirty cents a pack when I started. Would it please the gov't if we all stopped and lived ten years longer? Would the Social Security run out of money quicker? Would the diseases we all eventually die of be more or less expensive than smoking related maladies?

[cameron d]

01:53 AM on 06/23/2011

Yeah, I do actually. 6 x 7 = $42. I spend $42 dollars a week. But since I've decided to only drink coffee for breakfast since I was 13 years old my finances are fine.

[maxben]

09:45 AM on 06/23/2011

Yeah, I've stopped eating lunch. But I couldn't justify another meal anyhow so I would have stopped.

[ChiGuy]

01:29 AM on 06/23/2011

Given the price of cigarettes today, it's really quite a silly question.
Of course we know what we pay.

[Gjorg]

01:19 AM on 06/23/2011

I only want the stuff I am addicted to. Keep your garden variety crap to yourself.

[Ole Olson]

11:26 PM on 06/22/2011

A better question is: Is it the governments business? How much do you spend on alcohol? On twinkies? On flotation devices? On pot? On (name your own thing)... The Left needs to realize that the government shouldn't be involved in every aspect of our lives! At some point...you have to grow up and make your own decisions. If you give the government an inch, they will take a mile... Prohibition was a bad idea...so is any other prohibition. Let the people decide for themselves...

[ChiGuy]

01:27 AM on 06/23/2011

You need to take politics out of your thought process on this matter. It's 100% off base.

I am liberal, and a smoker, and I don't for one second like how smokers have been treated for the past several years, OR, how the tobacco companies have been bullied yet again this year with new regulations about warnings on their packs of cigarettes.

Additionally, I have many conservative acquaintances and family members who are some of the the most annoying of the anti-cigarette preachers I have ever been confronted by.

[maxben]

09:46 AM on 06/23/2011

My friend had to quit his conservative evangelical church because of their bias against smokers and the dirty looks they would give him.

[SamKnause]

11:13 PM on 06/22/2011

Yes.

$14.79 for a 16 ounce bag of tobacco.

$ 2.19 each for a box 200 tubes x 3 = $6.57

$14.79
+6.57=
$21.36+ sales tax

+ or - $23.00 for three cartoon of cigarettes.

[ecotopian]

11:17 PM on 06/22/2011

There was an article in the NY Times about a woman in who was growing her own tobacco to sidestep the taxes. There wasn't a thing the state could do about it, since it is legal to grow.

[SamKnause]

11:45 PM on 06/22/2011

I have tobacco growing all around me.

I could grow it on my 12 acres if I wanted to.

I don't think I have ever heard of anyone rolling tobacco leaves and smoking them.

They have all kinds of flavors and chemicals added.

I think unprocessed tobacco leaves would be to harsh.

Next time I talk to any of the farmers around here, I will ask them.

I have picked up tobacco on stakes out of the fields, handing it up to men riding on wagons stacking the tobacco on the stakes. It is taken from there and hung in barns to cure.

I have also worked in the tobacco stripping rooms. That is when you remove the leaves from the tobacco stalks.

None of the people I worked with used their own tobacco for cigarettes.

[frank day]

11:06 PM on 06/22/2011

Cigarettes have gotten ridiculously expensive.

We need to subsidize tobacco to bring the cost back down.

[maxben]

09:47 AM on 06/23/2011

Not really, they could just drop the sin tax and they will be cheap again.