Cigarette Prices

I don't pay attention to the price of cigarettes. I assumed that they are going for $5 or $6 a pack these days. Tonight, a guy in front of me at the checkout in our small local grocery store bought a pack and paid $11 and change for it. My jaw dropped to the floor.

After he left, I had to ask the clerk to be sure I had seen that right. Indeed, he paid eleven dollars and forty-something cents for a pack of cigarettes.

So a pack a day habit will run about $350.000 $3500.00 $4172.00 in a high cigarette tax area. Wow. Could lease a car for that amount of money.

This is probably another one of my last-person-to-find-out stories.

Comments

[Noni Mausa]

You probably mean $3500. Those little decimal points get away from me, too.

Although when I multiple $11.43 x 365, I get $4,172, enough for a modest new car loan.

Noni

[Dr X]

LOL, $3500. And laughing again, thanks for actually doing the multiplication for me. duh. No one would ever know it, but I used to be lightening quick with arithmetic done in my head. I guess I'm still lightening quick, but I'm quick to get the wrong answers. My quant score today wouldn't get me into my graduate program.

[Dave the Carpenter]

I feel lucky, KOW. My father died from lung cancer in 1994. My mother, who never used tobacco, died from cancer treatment complications in 1985. I quit smoking about seventeen or eighteen years ago. It was on Valentine's day, and, so-far-so-good. I'm not laughing at all---just feel lucky, knock-on-wood. I have had a lot of money to spend on other things too. Not too bad.

[onkelbob]

As a denizen of hell (aka NYC) I'm well aware of the high price for cigarettes as I see bodegas offering sales for the low price of $9.50! Indeed, the cost has prevented me from taking up the habit with the goal of shortening my time here. I choose instead to forgo dental hygiene with the goal of encouraging pancreatic cancer. It's either that or fly to California and commit a nonviolent felony. Imprisonment in Soledad is preferable to freedom in NYC.

[NoniMausa]

Both my parents died of smoking related illnesses. Those illnesses took a huge toll in medical expenses. Dad's expenses cut mom's retirement savings roughly in half, and 20 years later, my mother's estate was barely enough to pay her last hospital bills and the funeral expenses.

So not only do you pay $4500 a year, but in the end you (or your kids) pay many thousands in helping you die a little bit more slowly.

Tobacco companies -- living proof that the devil is alive and well and going about his business with a happy little chuckle.

Noni