Do you dip a can a day? I thought dip was like $6-$7 around here. That’s s lot in a month!
Proposed Tobacco Taxes
- Thread starter kanaia
- Start date
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
Site Sponsors
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
- Status
Just buy the freaking tobacco now and forget about trying to calculate the odds. You're gonna lose.
Besides taxes and increasing interdiction, prices will only rise, and cheaper processing practices will lessen quality.
Besides taxes and increasing interdiction, prices will only rise, and cheaper processing practices will lessen quality.
Because a package of Drum rolling tobacco (50grams) and Bugler cigarette tobacco is taxed now at $26 a pound and Captain Black at $2.88 a pound, and Gambler “pipe tobacco” is also.
What this tax will do, is equalize the cost of RYO tobacco and ALL pipe tobacco, with cigarettes on an equal basis. The cigarette tax goes up to $2 a pack. The Bugler cigarette tobacco tax and the Bugler “pipe tobacco” tax doubles to $50 a pound.
There’s about 1 gram of tobacco in a cigarette.
We use 3 to 5 grams to fill a pipe.
I’m sitting here ruminating about all this, and before me sits a $15 can of GL Pease Haddo’s Delight. Let’s say there are ten smokes in that can and that’s $1.50 a huge artisan pipe full.
Today the pipe tobacco tax is $2.88 a pound. That’s 18 cents an ounce, 36 cents a can.
The proposed tax is $50 a pound, $3.125 an ounce. Ouch!!!
Instead of 36 cents a can the tax will be $6.25 a can.
Time will tell how much putting a $3.125 an ounce tax on all pipe tobacco hurts the luxury brands, that already sell for about six or seven dollars an ounce.
But if that can of GL Pease was $25 I’d still buy it, and spend another dollar a smoke.
What it’s sure to hurt are the sales of Prince Albert at $3 for 1 1/2 ounces in those same liquor stores that carry pipe tobacco you request.
The working man with his Grabow might get ten smokes now at thirty cents a smoke.
Will he buy a ten dollar package of Prince Albert?
At that same store cheap cigarettes with a dollar federal tax a pack are $25.
He might buy a forty dollar carton of cigarettes instead, and spend four dollars a day to smoke a pack.
The worst part of the proposed tax is that it’s going to hurt pipe smokers who buy cheap OTC brands the most.
The cans are tiny! Yes though, I easily go through a can a day, usually 2 cans. It seems the more I try to quit, the more I dip. It’s getting to be just sad though, gonna have to go cold turkey. I’m the kind of guy that is all or nothing. If it were cheaper, I would have switched over to chewing but those pouches are about 12 bucks each now.
Taxes only go up when they change. Retail prices usually only rise. While this is a problem for those with a static income, most can figure a way to meet rising costs. If not, luxuries,such as smoking, dining out, movies, imbibing and the like must be reduced. Too few people are willing to leave the comfort zone of friends, family and community in order to improve their income, easier to groan and complain. "Life's a bitch ... then you die" is the old bromide I firmly believe. "Adapt or die" is another. But, life can be enjoyable, in the main, if one simply makes the necessary adaptions.
We get the government taxes and programs that we vote for, and therefore deserve.
We may get what we vote for as most voters are not particularly discerning with regards to what or who they are voting for. I seriously doubt we all get what we deserve though.
That said, IBTL.
Yawn, New Zealand smokers stressed out about these price increases in the 80s and 90s (before I was a smoker)...Subsequent annual increases at this point get a bit of a token whinge, but there has been no surprise for decades.
I have a bit of a cellar of commercial favourites and some whole leaf to smoke and I am starting a third year of growing my own. I intend to grow a small crop every year, just enough for a years smoke basically. I can let the bulk of my homegrown get some age on it while smoking through the tins etc.
Last year when they pushed through a bill to make it (essentially) illegal to import tobacco through the mail service, It took me a while to get my head around the fact that I am cut off from easy tobacco purchases but honestly I am quite enjoying working with the limitations imposed now...Thinking about what seed to try in the future to replicate certain blends/genres etc...
I have a bit of a cellar of commercial favourites and some whole leaf to smoke and I am starting a third year of growing my own. I intend to grow a small crop every year, just enough for a years smoke basically. I can let the bulk of my homegrown get some age on it while smoking through the tins etc.
Last year when they pushed through a bill to make it (essentially) illegal to import tobacco through the mail service, It took me a while to get my head around the fact that I am cut off from easy tobacco purchases but honestly I am quite enjoying working with the limitations imposed now...Thinking about what seed to try in the future to replicate certain blends/genres etc...
Look on the bright side: like with the old USSR, the whole country could break apart into separate regional entities- and these new federal taxes could end up irrelevant.
(Yep, that reply is 95% tongue-in-cheek. But one never knows 100% What might happen in the future. The Russians sure didn’t back in 1990.)
(Yep, that reply is 95% tongue-in-cheek. But one never knows 100% What might happen in the future. The Russians sure didn’t back in 1990.)
I guess we've had enough conjecture, and before this whole thread goes tits up, I will gently close it.
- Status