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Would you still smoke if cigarettes cost $11.00 a pack?

I still wouldn't smoke if they were free, or even if I was paid to do it, but that's just me.

Rolfe.
 
It's closer to thirteen dollars here, and people keep smoking. I doubt very many quit permanently because of cost increases.
 
20 Marlboro are £6:15 in a supermarket which google tells me is $9.14, they're more expensive elsewhere and we'll see if tomorrow's budget annoucement targets the smokers as usual.
 
Back when I never paid more than $2.00 for a pack (tax included) and often paid less, considering frequent discounts, buy one get one free offers, etc., I would say that I would quit if they ever hit $5.00 a pack.

Right now, the cheapest place I can buy them in town is precisely $5.00 a pack, and that's with a $1.00 manufacturer discount. Typically, I pay closer to $6.00, though if I'm stuck far away from my stores of choice, $7.00 or even $8.00 is not unheard of.

So what happened? Simple: before cigarettes cost me $5.00 a pack, they cost me $4.70 or $4.80. When I was paying $2.00, $5.00 was a wickedly steep price increase. By the time it actually jumped to $5.00, though... well, what's another 30 cents? You can lead people anywhere if you're patient enough.
 
Roll your own. With a cigarette machine and pipe tobacco the cost is around $1 to $1.50 a pack.

But I'm still a tobacco addict, so yes, I would pay $11.00 a pack if I had to. Generally the way to do this is to sacrifice other vices/luxuries -- fast food, movies, et cetera...
 
$11 is pretty much what it costs in Norway.

People still smoke.
 
If they tried to charge that much for them here in shops, you'd be able to get them for $2 from any street vendor. Shadow economy ftw.
 
Would you still smoke if you had to live in a special "camp" where smokers are "concentrated" for their own good?

C'mon you all know this social engineering will eventually lead to that.
 
Travis said:
Would you still smoke if you had to live in a special "camp" where smokers are "concentrated" for their own good?

C'mon you all know this social engineering will eventually lead to that.
Click to expand...

Well, as much as some cities have tried, there are still homeless people, and that is the only other subset of the population that can legally make every surface they come into contact with smell that bad.

(I kid, kinda)
 
As others have pointed out, they already do over here. For example, according to this site, a 25 pack of Winfield Blue Cigarettes cost $12.70, which comes to $11.14 in US dollars.

But it gets worse. There's talk about a tax hike on cigarettes. They could be going up to $20 per pack. That's $17.55 US dollars

SMOKERS may pay an extra $6.50 for a packet of 30 cigarettes to help foot the bill for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's $18 billion health reforms.

The Government's National Preventative Health Taskforce has called for the tax rise in next month's Budget and the soon-to-be-released Henry tax review also examines the option.

A tobacco tax rise could raise two-thirds of the $3 billion Mr Rudd needs to fund the sweeteners he has offered the states to endorse his healthcare reforms.

Up to three million smokers would be hit if the price of a pack of 30 cigarettes rose from about $13.50 to $20 over a three-year period under the preventative health taskforce model.
Click to expand...
Here's the rest of the article: http://www.news.com.au/money/money-...ck-of-cigarettes/story-e6frfmd9-1225853391489

So maybe you should be asking, would you still smoke if cigarettes cost $17.50 per pack?

(Disclaimer: I don't smoke. Info courtesy of Google.)
 
Travis said:
Would you still smoke if you had to live in a special "camp" where smokers are "concentrated" for their own good?

C'mon you all know this social engineering will eventually lead to that.
Click to expand...

Already has. We have our own camps we built ourselves. You can find us on the sidewalk, huddled in little groups, puffing away. And, oh yes, we do talk about corporate happenings and make bonds with each other. Funny how the smokers' cabal accomplishes the same thing the water cooler used to. Nothing like a shared addiction to get you an 'in' with some higher-up in the department.

I am curious at what price point cigarettes will develop a neat underground market and how it will work. Will they be smuggled from Mexico? Will they be produced from tobacco grown in unlicensed and illegal plots? Will I demand that my buyer, "Smoke one in front of me." So I can tell he isn't an undercover police officer?

If you back-calculate, is the final price for a tobacco plant more or less than for a marijuana plant? (Assuming the $11.00 a pack and how many packs can come from a single plant.) I can start you out on the calculation -- a pound of tobacco makes about 700, 100mm cigarettes when I roll my own. This is a conservative estimate that gives a 'retail' for a pound of cut, cured leaf at $385.00 (using the $11 a pack figure).

Please use your internet monkey skills to find out how many pounds of tobacco leaf (smokable) comes from a single plant. We can compare it to the price and amount for a single marijuana plant and get this damn black market off the ground.
 
Keep in mind that if the tobacco price become great enough people would start producing it themselves, like any high-value drug. Then the government would launch a "war on" that, generating armed cartels as always.

When will we stop trying to force apart supply and demand? Many people die and supply still finds demand.
 
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