There are cigarettes on the market which are a lot cheaper than usual, I've seen some for as little as £1.50 (Minsk cigarettes. These cigarettes are most definitely not pure and have other disgusting stuff added to them which makes them taste even worse, but I imagine that someone who was addicted to nicotine wouldn't mind. Has increased prices led to a reduce in smoking? probably. Has increased prices led to addicts stopping? no, if you look hard enough there are a lot of shady dealers who cell cheap cigarettes under the counter that are not on show.
You are totally right about finding cheaper ways to get cigarettes. Rolling your own are one way to cheaply buy and use cigarettes. You also have the most common way to get cigarettes is to just ask for one. Plenty of smokers out there will bum you a cigarette if you ask.
This is the exact reason why I quit smoking. The price got so high that I couldn't even keep up with my bills. So I was pretty much forced to quit.
When people are addicted to something they somehow, someway find a way to keep doing what they do, no matter what the price is they will always keep doing it so I could not say that high prices are gonna make people quit smoking or so, that is highly wrong.
People often short themselves on money they need for things of actual importance to support addictions. I see people that don't have gas money, can't pay their rent or bills, or beg for bus fare that are smoking. Also people have been driven to lie, cheat and steal to obtain money to support addictions. When you take all this into account I don't see that raising the price is going to be much of a deterrent unless it was to a prohibitively expensive level.
N0t for my fiance :/ I've yet to see the price rise make him think it twice before buying more cigarettes. For some people a price rise won't just do, he is one of those persons. The graphic image warnings will never do it for him either. I honestly don't know if he will ever quit... probably he will be one of those who even after being diagnosed with cancer will continue smoking...
I think that with the increase in social pressure there will come a time that people just won't feel comfortable smoking. In the case of your fiance, he probably will get one of those wake up moments and probably quit from one day to the other.
I have never smoked, but I had a co-worker once who told me that she quit smoking cold turkey the day she found out that her brand of cigs were $1.00 a carton. Obviously, that was a long time ago now, but she was glad she did it. My brother still smokes, even with sleep apnea and a variety of breathing issues, and then he complains because he's not making enough money.
Our government recently passed a law levying hefty tax rates on tobacco manufacturers. In effect, the price of a single cigarette stick drastically increased. You thought that would be enough to discourage people but unfortunately the law didn't serve its moral purpose. In my workplace alone, a great percentage of the population still smokes. The incidence of lung cancer hasn't dropped either. In conclusion? Price increase cannot convince an avid smoker to quit.
For me, quitting wasn't really impacted by the price (although let's be honest, it's expensive these days to smoke) but it was primarily that I was noticing issues with my health, even after just a couple of years. I would smoke in conjunction with my drinking, and my alcohol addiction was definitely worse - but I found my breathing was really messed up! I would wheeze even when I wasn't doing any activity...and that's when I just thought "what kind of impact is this having on my lungs?"
My experience is that since cigarettes became so expensive, people have started buying the cheaper stuff. Still, I don't think higher prices are a deterrent. It's just too hard for them to quit.
It has reduced the number of cigarettes if anything. A much higher motive is required if I've got to quit.
I was talking about the cheaper stuff... I think they're even worse than the more expensive cigarettes. I mean ...how come they are so cheap? Are they using horse manure or some other cheap stuff?
The only thing high prices do is increase the market share for counterfeit cigarettes. Unless, the government seriously cracks down on those that sell these counterfeit cigarettes, the high price of legitimate cigarettes does absolutely nothing to reduce smoking, or even get people to quit.
Perfectly so. The black market thrives when the prices of cigarettes soar cos that's where people turn when prices start to bite.
I smoked for over 20 years and price was never an incentive to quit. I'd never even go for a cheaper brand after the price of my favorite brand went up. Smokers think of price hikes as social talking points but not as a reason to quit.
In over 20 years of life, I have never seen one single smoker quitting just because the price has risen once again. That simply doesn't matter to smokers, as they will find ways to go around it, for example they might switch to buying tobacco and rolling it or switch to vaping. An addict doesn't stop over things like the price being increased, because if one would've cared about the money wasted on addiction, it wouldn't have started on the first place.
Personally, I've cut down on smoking tobacco. I used to smoke Newports daily before the prices went up. My wife and I switched to Black and Milds since they were cheaper. Now we buy maybe 2 or 3 blacks a day which is much less than 5 packs of Newports a week. But I have to admit it doesn't work for everybody. I have friends and family that just adapt.
Here in South Africa they call the taxes on cigarettes, tobacco, alcohol and the likes "sin taxes". Every year the tax increase on these products are very heavy, more so as for most other things...and still they prevail.