Wow!
I just noticed that a pack of cigarettes, here in Mesquite, costs about $7.50. That’s a PACK, not a carton.
Gee, how times have changed.
When I was back in high school, hardly any of my schoolmates smoked. The school curriculum strongly discouraged the habit, my smoking parents would have killed me if I’d smoked, and I hung around with athletes and good students.
The “Fonzie”-type losers who did smoke back then in 1965 were paying about 25 cents a pack, as I recall, roughly the same price as a gallon of gas. At that time, tobacco companies were still denying that smoking caused cancer, although everyone knew otherwise.
About fifty years later, the “sin tax” (actually, an excise tax) on cigarettes, designed to discourage the cancerous habit, makes up about $5 of the $7.50 cost here in Nevada.
Hard to believe, but smokers must be extremely dedicated in New York State: the average cost per pack is $12.50, running as high as $14 in some locales.
Numbskulls who don’t give a crap about their health would be well-advised to head south. States like Missouri, Arkansas, Virginia and Alabama do not discourage smoking: the sin tax there is as low as $0.17 per pack. So, like a lot of things in the South, they’re “against” something, but…they don’t practice what they preach. (Besides, tobacco is grown in the South.)
I’m not sure that “sin taxes” really work. People who want to be stupid have every right to do so, I think, just as long as they don’t endanger me. At least that’s my primary belief.
However, in the case of people stupidly tempting lung cancer, the cost of their subsequent medical care inevitably impacts medical insurance costs, indigent medical care, and innocent family members, who end up caring for them. The indirect cost of smoking on the American economy is estimated at $300 billion per year.
Despite the heavy sin taxes, health education and TV anti-smoking ads, a lot of folks (and young people!) take up the habit. All of our four sons either smoke now or did when they were younger. Why? They didn’t learn it from us, that’s for sure. I never smoked, and my wife Charlie quit the habit forty years ago, when the kids were very young. I’m guessing that they thought it was cool…something forbidden, so they’d be challenging authority if they partook with their buddies from school. Some things never change.
My son Jeff and his wife, Carol, smoke a lot. They are, otherwise, intelligent people who are just stupid about smoking. They’re hooked. We dread the day we’ll get a phone call announcing a cancer or something. My grandfather died of throat cancer; it’s not a nice way to go.
Obviously, the cost per pack of cigs, even loaded down with all of those state and federal taxes, doesn’t deter them, even though Jeff is currently unemployed. They drink and smoke a lot.
It’s a sad truth that hungry, destitute alcoholics and smokers can always find money for booze and cigs. Go figure.
What costs more, cigarettes or steak? A very nice boneless ribeye steak might cost $15.00 per pound at our nearest Kroger grocery affiliate. Bon appetit. The cost of cigarettes at the same store, per pound: 1 cig = 1 gram, $7.50 per pack /20 cigs = $0.38 per cig, 1 cig = 1 gram, 1 pound = 456 grams, therefore a Kroger cigarette in Nevada costs (456 x 0.38) about $173 per pound.
So, not only is the shit expensive as all Hell, it’s bad for you, to boot.
Wow!