NYTimes: Cigarettes Top $9-$10 a Pack in The Big Apple

Now, New Yorkers are only looking at the cost of 10 packs to start on The Safe Cig.

Cigarettes in the Big Apple will top $9 a pack and in a number of cases more than $10 starting Wed. as a Fed. tax more than doubles to $1.01 per pack. With taxes having increased last year as well, the cost of each pack now carries $5.26 in executive charges in the great city of NY, making this one of the costliest places in the country to smoke. The town’s health dept, that has campaigned against smoking since 2002, is using this as another opening. A ten percent increase in the cost of cigarettes decreases consumption by up to five percent, according to the Centers for Illness Control and Prevention, and deters young folk from picking up the smoking habit.

While a 2007 study from the town discovered that higher taxes also prompt folk to buy from Indian reservations, duty-free shops and other low-tax venues, this Fed tax - which is to finance the states’ Kids’s Insurance Program - touches all states. In addition, budget inadequacies are pushing more than twenty states to look to tobacco for money, even those that have evaded tobacco taxes for years or decades.

(full article @ NYTimes.com)

For a smoking alternative that is not subject to tax increases, check out the electronic cigarette.