lizkat
Watching March roll out real winter
The last time I quit was 22 years ago after smoking for about 25 or 30 years (and having quit at least six or eight times, sometimes for three weeks and once for two years... "slow learner.")
in my case it wasn't the money, it was a blizzard and having three days to ask myself was I still not tired enough yet of going through nicotine withdrawal one more time? Maybe enough already?! I decided to take it as a sign that the blizzard was on MLK Jr. day. "Free at last?" I sold that idea in during the ensuing two days before they cleared out the town roads.
The price of cigarettes is astounding to me now and I cannot imagine paying for a pack of them more than I used to pay for a carton. NYS has the highest retail price in the country, over $12 a pack. No wonder the smoker rate in the state is down around 12%.
The demand for addictive products is still relatively inelastic... but at least in New York and with respect to cigarettes, the price may finally become a disincentive. The woman who ran the general store in the village finally quit selling them because it had become such a pain to sell a controlled item (lockup rules, audits and inventory paperwork etc) just to please remaining customers who were willing to scrape up the dough for a pack.
Some of her customers had apparently started to ask if she sold "lucies" -- loose cigarettes like they used to sell at candy stores in NYC way back in the day. That is illegal of course, and that's about when she decided not to bother with cigarette sales any more. It's not clear those customers were ever going to be able or willing to go buy a carton in town (20 miles RT), since they were asking to buy a lucie. So they may have just quit smoking when she quit selling.
