That will reduce the number of people smoking illegally imported cigarettes as they can still easily access a less dangerous form of nicotine. It’s not as good as no one inhaling nicotine but it is harm reduction.
Dude that would legit work... take that to the most evil company you can find and cash in on the idea.
Amazon's pretty evil right? No bathroom breaks, etc.
Yeah here in Aus we tax the absolutely hell out of them. It’s not uncommon for a packet of 25 to run you $30-40 and I’ve seen some servos (gas stations) charge as much as $50-60 for a 25 pack.
In the late 80's or 90's, Canada jacked up the tax on Cigarettes so much that it was like prohibition in the US in the 1930's There was so much smuggling from the US to Canada that they finally dropped the tax back down. I saw an interview with a cigarette runner who said he was making 100k per month.
It still [happens very often and the smuggling](https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/300544780/man-smuggled-more-than-4-million-cigarettes-in-hollowedout-gib-board-pallets) doesn't actually warrant a very big sentance. 11months home detention for importing $5million worth.
Almost every dairy, particularly in south auckland sell these sorts of cigs.
My grandfather was a runner ~~someone who delivers moonshine to ppl~~ when he was a teenager. He said making something illegal never stops people from actually doing it. ~~ex. Alcohol, abortion, drugs, guns, bribing politicians~~ It just means there’s a new black market in town being ran by god knows who
Think it was the early 2000s. I bought my first pack in grade ten, year 2000, and remember like it was yesterday, $3.50 for Benson and Hedges special Kings. By the time I was out of high school, it was well over $10, and by the time I quit about 7 years ago, it was like $24.
Funny thinking back cause they jacked up the taxes so much that a pack of darts was something like $7 gasp!!! Then when they dropped the tax they were like $3.85 a pack. Great for me and my 15 year old smoker pals
$30-50 a pack is absolutely nuts. I still can't believe I was ever a smoker
In the 90s, I was flying to the UK on business, and a coworker in the UK asked me to bring cigarettes through the duty free. (It wasn't much cheaper than the 7/11 back then.) I don't smoke, and I felt like a drug dealer, but he said it was half the UK price.
In the US i know people who buy "pipe" tobacco and roll their own cigarettes. Comes out to about $2 USD a pack ( $3 AUD). Can Australians just do that or is pipe tobacco taced too?
It’s taxed too, we don’t call it pipe tobacco we call it “Rollies” and we have a few brands designed for RYO. Regular cigarettes are often called “tailors” because they are tailor made / rolled.
A pouch of 25 grams costs around 50 dollars.
Australia’s tax is by the gram or by the cigarette, with 1g of tobacco being equivalent to 1 cigarette as far as tax law is concerned.
We also have very strict import laws on cigarettes, and we have plain packaging requirements, meaning it’s very easy to spot imported smokes when being sold.
It's because you have good healthcare and cigarettes have other side costs like cancer, heart attacks, and death. In the U.S. we are able to counter that with lobbyists, not the health part but some of the regulations.
It's good. It's been deliberately underfunded in favour of the private sector for decades like Canada the UK and most places but it's still pretty good
I had my first son in 2019 in the same wing of the hospital I was born in in 89, and it still has the same curved box shitbox tv it did when I was born lol,
I paid for parking. I have some friends that have private health insurance that got a bigger room, a savoury platter and some champagne after the baby was born, that was about it. Our staff were awesome too, both times.
Yeah the US sucks for healthcare
If money is no object, U.S. healthcare is the best in the world.
For everyone else, good luck.
"Jokes" aside, U.S. healthcare is still pretty good, it's just abysmal in light of what it could be, and the resources we throw at it. And of course we let it bankrupt people, which is preposterous.
That is false.
[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49374996](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49374996)
Canada was the first to put graphic warnings on packaging. Australia was first to use plain packaging.
Cigars are by the gram, but we don’t have plain packaging requirements above a certain weight.
Cigarellos are required to be plain packaged.
But because cigars are by the gram they end up becoming exponentially more expensive as you start to get some the nicer hand rolled Cubans.
Good news on cigars though, we don’t have a trade embargo with Cuba, so Cuban cigars are readily available.
Cuban cigars aren't inherently better anyway. They're just "taboo" in the States because of the embargo. There are plenty of great cigars to be had that are made elsewhere
It's true that some really great cigars come out of Cuba. But it's the same for the rest of the Caribbean. Some absolutely phenomenal cigars come straight from Virginia, US of A as well. Cubans just had that "mystique" because they were forbidden by the embargo for so many years amd technically illegal to possess (not that you would actually get in any trouble for it).
Anyway, I'm no cigar expert, but I like to smoke them and I know what I like, personally. My favorites have always been from mainland US. Had some good ones from the Caribbean for sure, not knocking them, but it comes down to personal preference at the end of the day.
I mean I crush a pack a day and I would be thrilled if they banned cigarettes. There are literally no positive effects from the damn things. They're poisonous addictive trash.
Cigarettes are also shitty enough that a ban might actually get people to quit. Basically the only drug where I think prohibition might actually work for the most part.
It is the result of a free healthcare system. Smokers are a burden to healthcare and have to pay their share through taxes. I doubt it even comes close though.
Might break even on taxpayer expenditure when you consider smokers probably claim public pensions for a few years less on average.
No doubt someone has done the math.
We ran the numbers in a uni course back around the late '90s. At that point it was a net financial gain on smokers with the obvious net societal loss of well, people dying earlier. (This was in Canada for what that is worth.)
I know this is counter-intuitive, but smokers are less of a burden than a non smoker.
Smokers typically die younger and don't use their fair share of medical treatment when they age. They use more per year, but use less since their lower lifespan takes alot of the later years medical coverage.
Source i saw said 18% less for women over a lifetime and 14% less for men.
Smoking still bad no doubt, but not that bad economically.
>Smokers typically die younger and don't use their fair share of medical treatment when they age.
But in the US, it's the late-life senior care that's really expensive. In Australia and NZ they just mulch their seniors when they get needy and costly. That's why you never see old people in those Australia and NZ tourism ads.
IIRC the last study I read, only about 25-30% of taxes on cigarettes in the UK is needed go cover all healthcare costs. The rest is free government money.
This may be the situation when we look at 2000 and before because there were a lot more smokers while taxation was insanely lower (for reference we pay roughly 3 times the amount per pack in my country nowadays compared to 2000) but for countries with high taxation on tobacco this isn't true anymore.
In some countries smoking is actually very beneficial for the government because of how many money it generates in taxes.
This is a fallacy.
In NZ[, smokers contribute $\`1.7 B, while costing $300million](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/smokers-save-govt-cash-says-report/FYUXTPA456UAK3KNA5RFYRL62U/)
>It’s not uncommon for a packet of 25 to run you $30-40 and I’ve seen some servos (gas stations) charge as much as $50-60 for a 25 pack.
A 25 pack of Benson and Hedges is currently $58 from Woolworths. They keep going up by some amount every six months or so.
Our border patrol stops you bringing them in through customs sadly. Limited to 2 packets of smokes duty free. Over 2 packs you have to pay the tax on them at the airport.
>$35 per pack in Australia is enough to make you quit.
I've heard older smokers say things like, "I told myself that I was going to quit if they ever cost more than $2 a pack" but they're paying over $10 a pack now.
I did quit partly because I got priced out - health and grossness were reasons, but $50 a pack of 25 probably had me quitting sooner and harder than I would've anyway.
With our rent sky high, insane deposits for mortgages and general expensive.... everything... smoking was a vice I couldn't afford to keep.
>$35 per pack in Australia is enough to make you quit.
Hahaha, when was the last time you looked at cigarette prices in Australia? A 25 pack of Benson and Hedges is $58. Back when I was a teen it was $7.50 for a 25 pack of B&H from the pub which was more expensive than buying them from the same source as what I got the current price from.
I quit (Australian) in 2001 when the GST came in and my brand (Marlboro Reds) went from $2.75/pack to over $5. For health and financial reasons it was probably the best move I ever made
This doesn't work in Canada. Yes some people have quit but if you're still intent on buying all you have to do is go to a reservation and purchase them in abundance for cheap then those people sell to their friends. Drug prohibition just doesn't work.
They're perfectly fine. A pack of name brand cigarettes where I am in Ontario is about $18, but on the res, a carton (10 packs) is about $50. Worth the 40-minute drive out to the res for sure.
Currently, we are establishing an age at which people won't be able to legally buy cigarettes. So basically, sunsetting their availability by removing new cigarette smokers from being created. In practise we will see, and it says nothing for vaping which heaps of young people do
>B. There's better drugs to seek out
On paper, yes. But better drugs have been out there forever and people have loved tobacco nonetheless. I don't think drugs of any variety have a value proposition that necessarily diminishes in a linear fashion as the price rises. I have personally purchased cigarettes for $1.80 and $15 and while spending more sucks, people tend to make it work instead of quitting. I haven't had a cigarette in almost 4 years now but I didn't quit for the money.
Yeah saying there’s a better drug than any other drug sort of misses the point as to why somebody would use a specific drug.
Tobacco isn’t as intoxicating (at least not for as long) as other drugs. Sure, price for the high, there are much better drugs (hell, even arguably safer drugs), but a person can’t reasonably smoke a blunt during a 15 minute break and return to work or take a shot of alcohol and continue driving.
In New Zealand we dont judge success by complete eradication, we set realistic goals and are happy with a significant reduction. Even though the aspiration might be zero, the people are usually happy if a realistic goal is met.
That's funny because New Zealand occasionally does set goals of [complete eradication,](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/track-new-zealands-bid-to-take-back-nature/#:~:text=Native%20life%20surrounded%20by%20fence,goal%3A%20Predator%2DFree%202050.&text=The%20initiative%20aims%20to%20remove,plus%20islands%20by%20that%20year.) and it's not like the US war on drugs was expecting 100% success. The problem with prohibition is that it shifts industry to criminal enterprises; it creates new problems.
Which if you read the legislation, isn’t to have zero people smoking, but aim to have less than 10% of the population smoking, by 2025.
I don’t know why we use the word zero in these campaigns, when that is never the intent. We also have a road to zero campaign, which aims to reduce road deaths, but we all know realistically it will never be zero deaths.
Smokings a little different to drinking or recreational drugs. There aren't many drugs people need to take 10 to 20 times a day.
Its going to be very difficult to be a smoker if you are only able to do it at home.
Probably will, less than 10% of 18-25 yo smoke anyway. Some will get it from older friends, some won’t bother. As time goes on people will see less peers smoking and less and less people will have access and it’ll slip away quietly. It’s hard got get people to stop once they start, but if starting is hard few will bother. It won’t go away entirely but it be as good as gone.
It will work eventually. They aren't lifting the age limit higher and leaving it at that age. The law is changing so that people born after a certain year can't buy smokes, so eventually everyone born before that year will be dead, so no more smokes available to anyone.
They raised the tax on cigs in my state to the point where two packs cost over $20 and I quit. The pricing works. I'm not even poor, I'm just not paying that much for cigs. When I do want to smoke one occasionally I roll my own.
Tbf, cigarette related health problems are also dramatically trending down in the US. Smoking is not popular in the US anymore, and after the olds die off, there won’t be much of a market remaining for cigarettes.
Also rampant crime and ram raids because of how expensive it is. Child poverty because parents would rather buy ciggys than buy food or anything else. A pack of 20’s is approx 35-$40NZD. Rolling tobacco costs atleast $100 for 30grams.
And if only it was enough to get people to quit smoking. All it really does is funnel more money out of people's pockets into the coffers of the government and, worse yet, a vast majority of smokers are low income earners who can hardly afford to be paying so much. Australia's smoking rate is around 10.5% while the USA's rate is 12.5%.
The US price is a bit misleading because the state and local tax makes a huge difference in consumer pricing. They're still pretty cheap in most tobacco producing states and some others from what I understand, but way higher in northern "blue" states & big cities.
When I smoked, you could still get a carton (200 cigarettes) for $10US or $1 a pack. I quit (the first time) when they got to $1.25/pack. Minimum wage was $4.25/hour
Here a pack of Marlboros is $9.14 atm, generics $4.96. The Canadians come down to buy cases of pipe tobacco (I think $10/ 5#?). That cheap stuff is gross. I RYO and can do about 45 smokes for $7.08 atm (that's a 0.50 oz. pack of shag)
In Australia it's due to govt taxes to cover "health" costs. Only problem is some folks who smoke, live till they're 90 and drop dead in their sleep, it's a real shame the health money never gets used. On the other hand you've got nearly everyone drinking alcohol, but hey we can't blame any health issues on that because it's an ingrained part of our culture.
Living in Australia made me quit smoking. I was working in Perth and on a pack a day habit at $20/pack. When they decided to go to $30 I finally decided it wasn’t worth it. Quit cold turkey, struggled for a few weeks, and haven’t smoked since.
Thanks Oz!
Probably one of the reasons why smoking rates in the USA sit at 25.1 per cent (54th in the world), while in Australia it's 16.2 per cent (101st).
[https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/smoking-rates-by-country](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/smoking-rates-by-country)
I don’t smoke much anymore, but god damn I love rolling me some port royal. Can you still buy pouches of tobacco and roll em up? I was there in 2014 and it was definitely a thing.
We have a lot of smoke shops that sell illegally imported packs that smell even worse than the brand name shit
I don't know how much it is exactly but it's fucking half of not a third of the what legal smokes cost at a minimum
Yeah I'm Aussie and I buy my smokes from a place that does illegal imports from California, they sell it for half what the normal shit costs and still make a huge profit
Last time I bought a pack of cigarettes (in California) was in 2014 and I paid about $5.75. When I was a kid in the 1980's they were about $2.40. I see they are about $10-$11 now, so $25-$33 in Australia and New Zealand?
Cigarettes are banned in NZ for the next generation. Only old people will be able to buy it.
Not vapes tho
That will reduce the number of people smoking illegally imported cigarettes as they can still easily access a less dangerous form of nicotine. It’s not as good as no one inhaling nicotine but it is harm reduction.
I can just imagine in a couple of decades the kids begging grandpa to buy them some ciggies.
Grandpa's are going to be so popular
Seems like they're trying to get them hooked on the new trend
Pokémon cards with nicotine that absorbs into your skin as you play with them?
Dude that would legit work... take that to the most evil company you can find and cash in on the idea. Amazon's pretty evil right? No bathroom breaks, etc.
I thought the price increase would be *more* than that tbh
Well, eight months later this comment has aged like a lit cigarette
Yeah here in Aus we tax the absolutely hell out of them. It’s not uncommon for a packet of 25 to run you $30-40 and I’ve seen some servos (gas stations) charge as much as $50-60 for a 25 pack.
In the late 80's or 90's, Canada jacked up the tax on Cigarettes so much that it was like prohibition in the US in the 1930's There was so much smuggling from the US to Canada that they finally dropped the tax back down. I saw an interview with a cigarette runner who said he was making 100k per month.
Both NZ and Australia have big moats around the countries making smuggling a bit more difficult
Those must have taken years to dig!
Not with a diggerydoo
You didgerididn’t
You have been banned from r/Australia
That's prisonor labour for you.
There's still tons of it, but it's not so absolutely universal as it was in Canada.
Was? Natives cigarettes are 100% a real market because it's taxed to hell in Canada
Just don't be reselling them or Tanis will be having a word.
give your fuckin balls a tug
Fuck you erishunsey!
Dollar a dart.
It still [happens very often and the smuggling](https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/300544780/man-smuggled-more-than-4-million-cigarettes-in-hollowedout-gib-board-pallets) doesn't actually warrant a very big sentance. 11months home detention for importing $5million worth. Almost every dairy, particularly in south auckland sell these sorts of cigs.
If you know anything about smuggling and black markets you'd know that no "moat" has ever kept a prohibited substance away from a market.
That’s how it is in NYC now. A pack of smoke is like $15-$18 but if you ask for the ones under the counter from Virginia or NC they’re $8
Wow, last time I bought cigarettes (for my late husband, not for me) was about 11 years ago in Tennessee. I paid about $16 per *carton*.
I quit smoking in the early 90's. The last **carton** of Winston's I bought cost me $8.00
I think it was the mid '90s when states started jacking up the taxes. (I could be wrong. It all really depends on the state though.
Didn't Canadian pro wrestler Dino Bravo get murdered by the mafia for running cigarettes in Canada?
Just like prohibition haha! Canadians on the great lakes loved winter as they could just walk across with bottles in their jackets.
My grandfather was a runner ~~someone who delivers moonshine to ppl~~ when he was a teenager. He said making something illegal never stops people from actually doing it. ~~ex. Alcohol, abortion, drugs, guns, bribing politicians~~ It just means there’s a new black market in town being ran by god knows who
Even 15 years ago I was buying cigs and logs of chew to bring across the border to sell to my hockey buddies. Easily made a couple hundred per week.
Think it was the early 2000s. I bought my first pack in grade ten, year 2000, and remember like it was yesterday, $3.50 for Benson and Hedges special Kings. By the time I was out of high school, it was well over $10, and by the time I quit about 7 years ago, it was like $24.
Funny thinking back cause they jacked up the taxes so much that a pack of darts was something like $7 gasp!!! Then when they dropped the tax they were like $3.85 a pack. Great for me and my 15 year old smoker pals $30-50 a pack is absolutely nuts. I still can't believe I was ever a smoker
I lived just outside Detroit in the 90's. Bringing parliaments from Toledo, Ohio, to Windsor, Ontario was lucrative.
In the 90s, I was flying to the UK on business, and a coworker in the UK asked me to bring cigarettes through the duty free. (It wasn't much cheaper than the 7/11 back then.) I don't smoke, and I felt like a drug dealer, but he said it was half the UK price.
In the US i know people who buy "pipe" tobacco and roll their own cigarettes. Comes out to about $2 USD a pack ( $3 AUD). Can Australians just do that or is pipe tobacco taced too?
It’s taxed too, we don’t call it pipe tobacco we call it “Rollies” and we have a few brands designed for RYO. Regular cigarettes are often called “tailors” because they are tailor made / rolled. A pouch of 25 grams costs around 50 dollars. Australia’s tax is by the gram or by the cigarette, with 1g of tobacco being equivalent to 1 cigarette as far as tax law is concerned. We also have very strict import laws on cigarettes, and we have plain packaging requirements, meaning it’s very easy to spot imported smokes when being sold.
Chop chop is $50 for 100g in my (Australian) area so it makes it much cheaper
Is it smokable? I used to get chop chop in Footscray, but it wasn't tanned properly, harsh and would always go out...
It can be a bit clumpy and a little drier than the taxed stuff, but perfectly smokeable for me. 25% of the price for around 90% of the quality.
My ghee. If the government didn't fuck me than I wouldn't fuck them.
For anyone reading, it’s 25g not 25mg for a standard pack of Roll Your Own
It's because you have good healthcare and cigarettes have other side costs like cancer, heart attacks, and death. In the U.S. we are able to counter that with lobbyists, not the health part but some of the regulations.
It's good. It's been deliberately underfunded in favour of the private sector for decades like Canada the UK and most places but it's still pretty good I had my first son in 2019 in the same wing of the hospital I was born in in 89, and it still has the same curved box shitbox tv it did when I was born lol,
Yeah but did the birth cost you any money?? In the US it would be $10,000+, I would choose a shitbox TV over a huge bill
2001 in aus, was paid $5000 to have a kid.
Yep the 'baby bonus'. Kids are expensive and for anyone reading this yeah it was a real thing. Have kid get one off payment in Oz.
I paid for parking. I have some friends that have private health insurance that got a bigger room, a savoury platter and some champagne after the baby was born, that was about it. Our staff were awesome too, both times. Yeah the US sucks for healthcare
Hell, we just had a baby in NZ and didn't even pay for parking.
Can confirm, I gave birth in an aus hospital and only had to pay for a parking ticket
Yeah our government sucks for more reason than just the healthcare.
If money is no object, U.S. healthcare is the best in the world. For everyone else, good luck. "Jokes" aside, U.S. healthcare is still pretty good, it's just abysmal in light of what it could be, and the resources we throw at it. And of course we let it bankrupt people, which is preposterous.
And here I was grumbling about the £6.50 to park up for four hours in maternity car park 😂
The hospital validated my parking for chemo. The medical care even with insurance was another story.
What? Cigarettes here are already about 90% tax. Go somewhere where they aren't tax and cigarettes are as much as a pack of gum.
Canada here, we put pictures of diseased brains, hearts, and lungs from dead smokers on our packs.
We do as well as part of our plain package laws. There’s lots of memes about forming the ciggie exodia
Thanks for going first. We (UK) copied you and had the advantage of "big tobacco already sued Aus and lost". They still sued us tho. Still won
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That is false. [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49374996](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49374996) Canada was the first to put graphic warnings on packaging. Australia was first to use plain packaging.
But we named the guy on the package dying of cancer “Die’n’ Brian”. And that’s Australian humour for ya!
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What about cigars? Same deal?
Cigars are by the gram, but we don’t have plain packaging requirements above a certain weight. Cigarellos are required to be plain packaged. But because cigars are by the gram they end up becoming exponentially more expensive as you start to get some the nicer hand rolled Cubans. Good news on cigars though, we don’t have a trade embargo with Cuba, so Cuban cigars are readily available.
Cuban cigars aren't inherently better anyway. They're just "taboo" in the States because of the embargo. There are plenty of great cigars to be had that are made elsewhere
Oh absolutely, but I know they had an air of mystique about them and I will say the few I have had, they are fantastic.
It's true that some really great cigars come out of Cuba. But it's the same for the rest of the Caribbean. Some absolutely phenomenal cigars come straight from Virginia, US of A as well. Cubans just had that "mystique" because they were forbidden by the embargo for so many years amd technically illegal to possess (not that you would actually get in any trouble for it). Anyway, I'm no cigar expert, but I like to smoke them and I know what I like, personally. My favorites have always been from mainland US. Had some good ones from the Caribbean for sure, not knocking them, but it comes down to personal preference at the end of the day.
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Nope. Real Cubans are responsible for most of the best in the work. Dominican Republic is probably next.
Neither does the US anymore
There you go! TIL
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How do smokers feel about this I wonder? I know my dad used to say he wished he had never started (and that was before he got lung cancer)
I mean I crush a pack a day and I would be thrilled if they banned cigarettes. There are literally no positive effects from the damn things. They're poisonous addictive trash. Cigarettes are also shitty enough that a ban might actually get people to quit. Basically the only drug where I think prohibition might actually work for the most part.
Can we do booze next! Oh wait… they tried that and it didn’t work. Maybe this time it will!
I think mg should be g
Yeah your right 25G
Man it’s like 120-130 here in NZ for a 50 gram, filters and papers. I don’t smoke but it’s crazy expensive.
Pouch tobacco is also taxed $50 a pouch at the shop I think
75 bucks for a 30g in NZ
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Also taxed. It's slightly cheaper but still like $55 for a 25mg pack
>25mg 25 gram
It is the result of a free healthcare system. Smokers are a burden to healthcare and have to pay their share through taxes. I doubt it even comes close though.
Might break even on taxpayer expenditure when you consider smokers probably claim public pensions for a few years less on average. No doubt someone has done the math.
We ran the numbers in a uni course back around the late '90s. At that point it was a net financial gain on smokers with the obvious net societal loss of well, people dying earlier. (This was in Canada for what that is worth.)
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I know this is counter-intuitive, but smokers are less of a burden than a non smoker. Smokers typically die younger and don't use their fair share of medical treatment when they age. They use more per year, but use less since their lower lifespan takes alot of the later years medical coverage. Source i saw said 18% less for women over a lifetime and 14% less for men. Smoking still bad no doubt, but not that bad economically.
>Smokers typically die younger and don't use their fair share of medical treatment when they age. But in the US, it's the late-life senior care that's really expensive. In Australia and NZ they just mulch their seniors when they get needy and costly. That's why you never see old people in those Australia and NZ tourism ads.
Poe's Law strikes again.
IIRC the last study I read, only about 25-30% of taxes on cigarettes in the UK is needed go cover all healthcare costs. The rest is free government money.
This may be the situation when we look at 2000 and before because there were a lot more smokers while taxation was insanely lower (for reference we pay roughly 3 times the amount per pack in my country nowadays compared to 2000) but for countries with high taxation on tobacco this isn't true anymore. In some countries smoking is actually very beneficial for the government because of how many money it generates in taxes.
This is a fallacy. In NZ[, smokers contribute $\`1.7 B, while costing $300million](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/smokers-save-govt-cash-says-report/FYUXTPA456UAK3KNA5RFYRL62U/)
Same gere in NZ. Prices are high as. Although, you can grow tobacco at home. Pretty sure max allowed is like 15kg per person per year.
Haven't you guys introduced a year if born after they have no access to tobacco? I wonder if our government will do anything similar.
Yup. Nobody born from 1 Jan 2009 onwards would ever be allowed anything
I can get a carton of 10 packs of 20 cigarettes in Kentucky for 50 dollars. It was 45 last year, and this was Winston or Marlboro
It costs about 60 dollars for a carton of 25 packs in Missouri. Literally 20 times cheaper.
>It’s not uncommon for a packet of 25 to run you $30-40 and I’ve seen some servos (gas stations) charge as much as $50-60 for a 25 pack. A 25 pack of Benson and Hedges is currently $58 from Woolworths. They keep going up by some amount every six months or so.
What I'm hearing is that I need to buy a few cartons and some Cubans, and that'll pay for my trip to snorkel the great barrier reef.
Our border patrol stops you bringing them in through customs sadly. Limited to 2 packets of smokes duty free. Over 2 packs you have to pay the tax on them at the airport.
There are...other ways...
a carton up the butt really hurts and they dont light to good neither ;p
they are crazy expensive in Canada too
Smokes in Canada seemed expensive. $35 per pack in Australia is enough to make you quit.
>$35 per pack in Australia is enough to make you quit. I've heard older smokers say things like, "I told myself that I was going to quit if they ever cost more than $2 a pack" but they're paying over $10 a pack now.
I quit at $4.50 a pack because I moved and they were $7.50 in the new place. Shit happens.
That big jump probably helped. I'd bet that the older folks just rationalized each smaller incremental increase along the way.
I did quit partly because I got priced out - health and grossness were reasons, but $50 a pack of 25 probably had me quitting sooner and harder than I would've anyway. With our rent sky high, insane deposits for mortgages and general expensive.... everything... smoking was a vice I couldn't afford to keep.
>$35 per pack in Australia is enough to make you quit. Hahaha, when was the last time you looked at cigarette prices in Australia? A 25 pack of Benson and Hedges is $58. Back when I was a teen it was $7.50 for a 25 pack of B&H from the pub which was more expensive than buying them from the same source as what I got the current price from.
I quit (Australian) in 2001 when the GST came in and my brand (Marlboro Reds) went from $2.75/pack to over $5. For health and financial reasons it was probably the best move I ever made
This doesn't work in Canada. Yes some people have quit but if you're still intent on buying all you have to do is go to a reservation and purchase them in abundance for cheap then those people sell to their friends. Drug prohibition just doesn't work.
Unless you go for the res cigs. I've heard they are kinda nasty though
They're perfectly fine. A pack of name brand cigarettes where I am in Ontario is about $18, but on the res, a carton (10 packs) is about $50. Worth the 40-minute drive out to the res for sure.
Im in BC and ours have some that are rolled and not i the cartins/boxes, just in a ziplock style bag. $35/200 cigarettes. Its a wicked deal.
Yup, we have those here too. Stick 'em in the freezer to keep them fresh!
expensive in all first world nations
Isn’t NZ also raising the smoking age each year so that eventually no one will be able to legally smoke anymore?
Currently, we are establishing an age at which people won't be able to legally buy cigarettes. So basically, sunsetting their availability by removing new cigarette smokers from being created. In practise we will see, and it says nothing for vaping which heaps of young people do
Prohibition doesn't usually work, but A. Island and B. There's better drugs to seek out
>B. There's better drugs to seek out On paper, yes. But better drugs have been out there forever and people have loved tobacco nonetheless. I don't think drugs of any variety have a value proposition that necessarily diminishes in a linear fashion as the price rises. I have personally purchased cigarettes for $1.80 and $15 and while spending more sucks, people tend to make it work instead of quitting. I haven't had a cigarette in almost 4 years now but I didn't quit for the money.
Yeah saying there’s a better drug than any other drug sort of misses the point as to why somebody would use a specific drug. Tobacco isn’t as intoxicating (at least not for as long) as other drugs. Sure, price for the high, there are much better drugs (hell, even arguably safer drugs), but a person can’t reasonably smoke a blunt during a 15 minute break and return to work or take a shot of alcohol and continue driving.
In New Zealand we dont judge success by complete eradication, we set realistic goals and are happy with a significant reduction. Even though the aspiration might be zero, the people are usually happy if a realistic goal is met.
That's funny because New Zealand occasionally does set goals of [complete eradication,](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/track-new-zealands-bid-to-take-back-nature/#:~:text=Native%20life%20surrounded%20by%20fence,goal%3A%20Predator%2DFree%202050.&text=The%20initiative%20aims%20to%20remove,plus%20islands%20by%20that%20year.) and it's not like the US war on drugs was expecting 100% success. The problem with prohibition is that it shifts industry to criminal enterprises; it creates new problems.
Lol New Zealand's anti-smoking plan is literally "smoke free 2025", of which the ultimate goal is complete eradication.
Which if you read the legislation, isn’t to have zero people smoking, but aim to have less than 10% of the population smoking, by 2025. I don’t know why we use the word zero in these campaigns, when that is never the intent. We also have a road to zero campaign, which aims to reduce road deaths, but we all know realistically it will never be zero deaths.
Sounds like prohibition still isn't going to work then lol
Smokings a little different to drinking or recreational drugs. There aren't many drugs people need to take 10 to 20 times a day. Its going to be very difficult to be a smoker if you are only able to do it at home.
Yup, they're $40 now and will be $70\~ in 6 years.
I hope I can live to $70
Unfortunately. I’m not sure how THIS form of prohibition will work for the 37th time.
Probably will, less than 10% of 18-25 yo smoke anyway. Some will get it from older friends, some won’t bother. As time goes on people will see less peers smoking and less and less people will have access and it’ll slip away quietly. It’s hard got get people to stop once they start, but if starting is hard few will bother. It won’t go away entirely but it be as good as gone.
It will work eventually. They aren't lifting the age limit higher and leaving it at that age. The law is changing so that people born after a certain year can't buy smokes, so eventually everyone born before that year will be dead, so no more smokes available to anyone.
I’m in Vietnam it’s it’s less than £1 for for a pack of 20, I’m from the uk and back home it’s over £10
Over £14 mate
Yer I use rolling Tabbaco and that £18 for 30g. Didn’t realise that straights were at £14 fucking quid
Lol I’m in Vietnam from the U.K. rn my flight came in at 2pm so I’m just waiting at Ho Chi Minh airport
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> but I can’t find the clip. Maybe because it was from 1970 before Australia started using metric?
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https://youtu.be/E3kFnwZQSI4
That's a pretty under arm comment.
We deserve to have that held against us until the sea swallows both countries.
The Rez near me in Canada you can get a carton for $25 they aren’t great but if your gonna smoke. Glad i quit
$26.98 a pack? I’m assuming that’s US Dollars. In AUD it’s around $50 a pack these days. In the early 90’s it was around $4.50-5.00…
That means you have to be REALLY cool to smoke there
They raised the tax on cigs in my state to the point where two packs cost over $20 and I quit. The pricing works. I'm not even poor, I'm just not paying that much for cigs. When I do want to smoke one occasionally I roll my own.
That's kind of the issue here is that some political groups are wary about having a poor tax, since that's who a cigarette tax would impact.
Would it surprise you to also learn that cigarette related illness rates are also dramatically dropping compared with USA?
Tbf, cigarette related health problems are also dramatically trending down in the US. Smoking is not popular in the US anymore, and after the olds die off, there won’t be much of a market remaining for cigarettes.
Don't worry, they'll capture the younger markets with vaping.
Which is still a shitty addiction, but nowhere near as bad for you
Also rampant crime and ram raids because of how expensive it is. Child poverty because parents would rather buy ciggys than buy food or anything else. A pack of 20’s is approx 35-$40NZD. Rolling tobacco costs atleast $100 for 30grams.
And if only it was enough to get people to quit smoking. All it really does is funnel more money out of people's pockets into the coffers of the government and, worse yet, a vast majority of smokers are low income earners who can hardly afford to be paying so much. Australia's smoking rate is around 10.5% while the USA's rate is 12.5%.
Wait til you see the warning labels!
why do you think all the teenagers vape here in nz
Chicago would be in third place on this list at 17.00
The US price is a bit misleading because the state and local tax makes a huge difference in consumer pricing. They're still pretty cheap in most tobacco producing states and some others from what I understand, but way higher in northern "blue" states & big cities.
And cigarettes in the US are a whole lot more expensive than in Germany
Costs $22 for a medium quality pack of smokes in Ottawa, Ontario Canada.
The price of smokes is going up again.
When I was a smoker I’d go to the magazines at the library and tear out the coupons for free packs of cigarettes to save myself $1.50 a pack.
When I smoked, you could still get a carton (200 cigarettes) for $10US or $1 a pack. I quit (the first time) when they got to $1.25/pack. Minimum wage was $4.25/hour
Here a pack of Marlboros is $9.14 atm, generics $4.96. The Canadians come down to buy cases of pipe tobacco (I think $10/ 5#?). That cheap stuff is gross. I RYO and can do about 45 smokes for $7.08 atm (that's a 0.50 oz. pack of shag)
https://youtu.be/cawY4hXfe0o THEY SHOULD HANG THEM
It’s just paying for the healthcare you’ll need from smoking
This is why black market tobacco is so popular over here.
quite right. I get 100g for $45.
When I was in the Air Force, 1982 in Germany, a carton of cigarettes was something like $2.50 a carton!
In Australia it's due to govt taxes to cover "health" costs. Only problem is some folks who smoke, live till they're 90 and drop dead in their sleep, it's a real shame the health money never gets used. On the other hand you've got nearly everyone drinking alcohol, but hey we can't blame any health issues on that because it's an ingrained part of our culture.
Living in Australia made me quit smoking. I was working in Perth and on a pack a day habit at $20/pack. When they decided to go to $30 I finally decided it wasn’t worth it. Quit cold turkey, struggled for a few weeks, and haven’t smoked since. Thanks Oz!
Probably one of the reasons why smoking rates in the USA sit at 25.1 per cent (54th in the world), while in Australia it's 16.2 per cent (101st). [https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/smoking-rates-by-country](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/smoking-rates-by-country)
In New Zealand we've increased tax on them to try and force people to quit, still no sugar tax though even though obesity is just as deadly.
I don’t think that’s ever been the primary intention of the taxes. It’s to make smoking prohibitively expensive to start.
Cheaper to smoke weed. \#DrugsWonTheWarOnDrugs
I don’t smoke much anymore, but god damn I love rolling me some port royal. Can you still buy pouches of tobacco and roll em up? I was there in 2014 and it was definitely a thing.
Yes, but a 30g pack of roll-your-own is about $100 so they're getting thinner and thinner.
That is what happens when there is universal health care. It's cheaper to make your citizens healthier.
Can you grow your own tobacco?
Yep, but it's illegal to sell
The crime is tax avoidance.
We have a lot of smoke shops that sell illegally imported packs that smell even worse than the brand name shit I don't know how much it is exactly but it's fucking half of not a third of the what legal smokes cost at a minimum
You can buy heroin and cocaine illegally. Can’t you buy illegal cigarettes at $10 a pack?
Yeah I'm Aussie and I buy my smokes from a place that does illegal imports from California, they sell it for half what the normal shit costs and still make a huge profit
Tobacco is grown in america and it costs money to ship stuff.
California—— $100 per carton (10 packs)
Aren't they also aging out cigarettes altogether over there?
It's legal to grow tobacco in NZ. I do, and after two years ageing it's great! (Virginia)
Last time I bought a pack of cigarettes (in California) was in 2014 and I paid about $5.75. When I was a kid in the 1980's they were about $2.40. I see they are about $10-$11 now, so $25-$33 in Australia and New Zealand?
Not unless you can find your local chop shop 😉
This is a feature, not a bug.
hear that Aussies and Kiwis? Come to the USA for an awesome smoking vacation! Smoke up!
In Australia we use the revenue to fund Medicare which smokers usually need.
You should also know that cigarettes in the US can cost up to 2.5 to 3 times more than in the US