$50 per pound price increase.

[Elwin]

Thanks for your kind words, Bob. It could get a lot worse very quickly. $40 a pouch could soon seem like a bargain.

How much worse? Take New Zealand's government's current thinking: $100 a pack for cigarettes. No, I didn't mis-type that.

See here: http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/weird...148649075.html

Buy bulk, buy often.....but most of all.....buy now!

AlaskaChickenLittle

Thanks, Alaska. I saw that this morning in my news feed.

"The Ministry of Health wants New Zealand to be smoke free by 2025"
http://news.sky.com/home/world-news/article/16214173


So I guess that New Zealand no longer welcomes those darned Hobbits that brought so much revenue into their country, and are no longer welcome to have a bowl of Old Toby at the Prancing Pony - at least legally.
(You know that the black market is going to explode in NZ.)

I remember a time long ago when taxes were used as a 'control' to manipulate a government's subjects.
That didn't turn out like they intended it to...

Tea, anyone?

[AlaskaPuffin]

Taxation eventually becomes counterproductive, as our local city council has discovered to their chagrin.

After implementing confiscatory taxation of tobacco just a few years ago, they are now scrambling to make a up shortfall of $1.6 million in projected tobacco sales tax that vanished in the past year. Either people quit smoking or they buy their smokes elsewhere and avoid the tax.

see here: http://www.adn.com/2012/04/26/244080...ess-money.html

[Bob Loblaw]

I purchase my cigarettes from the nearby reserve. $25 for the first carton and $12 for every carton after that. I only wish they sold pipe tobacco.