Good Thing We Quit!

[Firegrl]

Just found this today: House OKs Cigarette Tax Increase Of 75 Cents - Politics News Story - KOAT Albuquerque.

75 cent tax hike on each pack of cigs. That would have been about a $22.50 raise on cigarettes a month for me. That would have been another $270 a year wasted on that nasty habit, just for taxes!

And all because Richardson can't balance the budget!

 

[SpottedPony]

Wow! I didn't hear this! I figured it was coming. As it stands...almost all of the cigarette price is tax. When they skyrocketed in price over a 2 or 3 year span..it was not from increased production costs - it was all tax. Heck..the raw material (tobacco) price decreased..as they import a huge percentage from S America now.
It is interesting to me that is is very difficult to find the average carton price on a city by city basis.

The last price I paid was 43.50 in Sept 09, bx/px. THat seems high, but in town they were 56!!!! Wholly molly!!!

Plus..it is interesting how short the news story was..just "voted to raise it"...nothing about how they have spent the millions they collected to date.

 

[Firegrl]

I was going to the tobacco Road drive-thru shacks and paying around $35 a carton. But, I would also drive up and tell them to give me the cheapest lights carton they had. Pretty cheap compared to what others are paying in other states. But, I would be paying a MINIMUM of $42.50 with this new tax alone. Ridiculous that they can tax anything to go up that high almost immediately....

So glad I quit. Now if we can just keep the FDA's greedy hands off our ecigs....

 

[Ciara]

Jeepers...just figured out how to join here

$0.75 a pack...*gulp!* I'm so thrilled I started vaping last week...this is terrible!

 

[carlton]

I just hope that if they keep raising taxes, they raise it on something that I don't use!

 

[wave42]

The increase would put the price per carton of my old brand at about $67.50 including GRT.

I've been telling every smoker I know about e-cigs. I also ordered a bunch of madvapes disposables and have been handing them out to everyone who has expressed a serious interest. If I can get just 10, pack a day (premium) smokers to quit, that's 6K in lost tax dollars per year. If we could get ten thousand people in NM to switch, the state would "lose" nearly 6 million per year in tax revenue.