Yeah, the caption was made in jest.
A pack of cigarettes here in tobacco country now costs a little over 7 bucks, which is twice as much as an entire carton costed back when I started smoking back in the early 70s. Yup I paid a whopping $3.50 a carton back then at the army PX and 35 cents for a single pack. And then, I quit smoking when a pack of Camel non-filters went up to 2 bucks a pack in the mid 80s in California because I was smoking 3 packs a day and who in the hell can afford that shit?
My Grandmother once told me that after her and my Grandfather got married that she would go down to the PX and buy a carton of Camel Straights for a dollar a carton. Around here a single pack is right at ten bucks, if you can even find them.
ReplyDeleteHere are the latest cigarette prices in Australia:
ReplyDeletea packet of 20 cigarettes costs $23.86
a packet of 25 cigarettes costs $29.48
a packet of 30 cigarettes costs $38.11
a packet of 35 cigarettes costs $41.95
a packet of 40 cigarettes costs $49.63
a packet of 50 cigarettes costs $53.95
RYO tobacco costs between $34.95 and $74.95
$45AU for 700ml spirits. They're called fun taxes.
"Fun taxes" sounds more honest than "sin taxes" we have here in the U.S.
DeleteAs an example:
ReplyDeleteIn Western Australia, Longbeach 40 pack - $61.95 (about USD$48 at today's exchange rate)
That single packet of cigarettes is worth about $40 Australian.
ReplyDeleteI gave up cigarettes in about 1978: at the time, twenty Benson and Hedges - one of the better coffin nails - cost 90p. At that year's exchange rate, that made them $1.75 - 9c each. Today they're £13.20 - $18.08 or 10 times as much - 90c each! I just want to know what happened to the money I saved . . . oh, yes, cars, bikes, booze and a wife!
ReplyDeleteYou did things in the wrong order: start with 'wife' and you'll never be able to afford cars bikes or booze....
Delete😂😈😯😩😎
Jesus - that is crazy. When I began smoking in 1981, Marlboro soft pack was 60 cents in convenience stores. I later switched to Camel Filters and quit in 1998 when they were about $3.25 a pack.
ReplyDeleteAt todays prices, might as smoke it by the bowl, not a pipe. Not that I know anything about that - moving along ...
When I started, a gallon of gas and a pack o0f Marlboro were both 25 cents. When I finally managed to quit, cigarettes were $6.50.
ReplyDeleteOh man, I was smoking those same non filter Camels, two and a half to three packs a day when I quit mid 90s. Wasn't so much the cost, times were good to me then, but the forty mile round trip if I ran out between regular trips to town. I think Australian smokes are around fifty bucks a pack so 45000 a year would be reason to quit.
ReplyDeleteDaryl
In Canada, a pack of 20 cigarettes cost about $17.
ReplyDeleteMost smokers are rather poor. This is a huge burden on them.
Then there is the on going burden of everything taxed at all levels to make everyone poor
A fifth of Jameson is around $60
A gallon of gas is about $5.85
Canada is largely a socialist country with far left leadership ... real pack of dumb shits too.
Even the dumbest dumbshit is smarter than Turdball.
Deletethe left hates poor people and minorities and feels fine with taking advantage of them with policies and taxation.
ReplyDeleteYou quit smoking because it got too expensive?
ReplyDeleteYou must be some kind of anti-social nutcase to deprive California of all the extra taxes on cigarettes. So it is YOUR fault California is turning into a poor third-world sh.thole country. Were you really naive enough to think that California was concerned about your HEALTH when it added all those taxes?
START SMOKING!
😂😈😯😩😎
In 'Nam we were given cigarettes. They were also in the C-rations. If you wanted to buy some they were a nickle a pack.
ReplyDeleteI still remember my old man taking me to the local gin mill in the early 1950s. A 7oz glass of draught beer was 15 cents. He'd give me a quarter and my job was to go to the vending machine by the door and buy a pack of Camels for him. The pack came out with 2 pennies taped to the side since the pack cost 23 cents. I got to keep the pennies for my efforts.
ReplyDeleteIn New Zealand, a pack of 20 Peter Stuyvesant currently costs about $US22
ReplyDeletePrices usually increase about 10% per year as an "incentive" to make peple quit
However, this year the increase is only 1.4%...
Back in 2012 I had a satellite earth station install in South Australia. I had another engineer with me to do the site survey. The second night there we were in the bar where all of the locals were bumming a smoke off of him. He probably gave away 3/4 of the pack of Marlboro's. The next morning we stopped at a convenience store and was shocked when he had to pay $28 for a pack of reds.
ReplyDeleteI was back 6 weeks later with my install team. I had warned them of the high prices on tobacco products. I had one tech that smoked and the other dipped. The one that smoked hid 5 cartons in his luggage. He ran out 3 days before he shipped out. The guy that dipped got tagged with a $200 fine and his dip confiscated. Dip was illegal there. He ran out half way through the job and was forced to quit.
Food was cheap but everything else was like buying stuff in Hawaii.
Yeah, remember when. 1965-66, PX, Korea, non-filter 10 cents, filtered 12 cents. At SF airport late 1967, just back from Vietnam, I paid 50 cents for a pack.
ReplyDeleteIs weed more expensive too?
ReplyDeleteI watched a program about cocaine smuggling in Aus.; the kilo that's worth $25k in Miami will sell for $300k in Sydney.
CC
"Costed" is not a word, unless you are five. My NYR is to quit smoking, but I got this last pack left, so maybe I start a week late.
ReplyDeleteHad I never gone to that VA TBI clinic for 3 months, I wouldn't have started again, but it has been 5 years now and this has gone on too long. I don't like habits that make me a slave.
It's a word if you're a fucking Okie like I am.
DeleteIn 1965 I was working at Cherry Point MCAS in Havelock N.C. Cigs were 1.80 / carton in the grocery store....I couldn't afford to quit....
ReplyDeleteLast November, "For The Children", the Libs in Oregon voted to increase the price of cigarettes $2/pack, or $20/carton.
ReplyDeleteThat would make the cheapos I smoke over $60/carton, so for the last 2 months of the year, I was buying 2 - 3 cartons a week.
The Plaid Pantry I bought from always had plenty in stock, too.
Until I went in on New Year's Eve and found that they had been wiped out that day. Some people just don't plan ahead.
A pack of 20 cost 40 AUD, about 35USD. That might be about right in comparison to the amount of grub a pack will buy.
ReplyDeleteAll the tobacco is imported, and then they tax it again at point of sale, to reduce usage. The cost is allegedly to reduce consumption.
If we got serious about it we would drop the subsidies on tobacco, and that would kill the market, but the .gov crew makes to much graft off the sale so that will never happen.
When I was young my mother paid for a 250 mile trip to Disneyland for a family of nine with the equivalent of my dad's cigarette money. She'd match his smokes money in a big jar in the dining room. DL was about $5. I understand it's over $100 today.
ReplyDeleteI quit in HS when the price for a pack went to 33 cents. I just said, so fucking way I’m paying that much. I needed money for fuel in my Bronco, beer and for dope.
ReplyDeleteI gave them up when they hit .45¢ a pack and pretty much the same reason.
DeleteJD
1971 Key West, FL weed $10.00/ounce. A lb ran $310.00-$325.00.
ReplyDeleteI started smoking at 13, whatever my the city councilman's son had, and switched to non-filter Pall Mall at 18. I would smoke Camel filters when playing racquetball or when riding a bike (because non-filters would disolve in my sweat) In 1990 i hit 5 packs/day and kept that pace until I chagned jobs in 1994. I then smoked 1-3 packs/day for 24 years. When they stopped making them in December of 2018, I had the local QT order all of them that they could get. I ended up with 24 cartons of what had been $60/cartons for $12/carton in the freezer...they lasted until June 2019... I'm currently at about 2 packs/day of cheap non-filters. It doesn't matter, I'd just prefer not to have to tear the filters off.
ReplyDeleteFor crying out loud, just roll your own. 50 bucks for a machine, a pound of tobacco for $13 and blanks for about $3 per carton. I rolled my own for 10 years for less than $12 a carton.
DeleteI remember back in grade school me and a bunch of neighbor hoodlums would bike down to the local Rockford Lanes to hit the bartender up for a quarter to buy a pack of smokes. And he would always pay up just to get rid of us. Then we would carry the smokes back behind their garage or under the viaduct at Mill creek and smoke (and cough) away. Good times.
ReplyDeleteI stared smoking tailor-mades around the time I went in the Navy which was 1966. I was rolling Bull Durham and PA (and no I never smoked DOPE) and Chesterfield shorts when I could find them.
ReplyDeleteThose were the days before the tobacco companies began messing with the tobacco. Once in the Navy, I didn't have the time to roll my own and I found Camels. Wow! that was a great smoke. Shorts, no fucking filter. Wake up in the morning hack up a big green lugie and light up your first Camel of the day. Life could not have been better.
By the time the 70's rolled in the costs were going up and the tobacco was getting worse. Of course I chewed Days-O-Work plug and it was still the same, so in 1977 I quit smoking and kept chewing until 2012 when I saw the damage tobacco had made to my gums and I quit chewing.
I love tobacco, but not the toxic shit that is sold today. Shame on fedgov, tobacco companies and all the commies that fucked my tobacco pleasure. I will you all to fucking HELL.
Well here in Oz FOOD has gone up around 30% in the past 12 months for most common items so anyone who smokes must be well off !
ReplyDelete