Soaring Tobacco Prices ?

[Puffy]

As I said here recently I buy a five pound bag of bulk tobacco each year.It's time for me to order.Today I checked my receipts to see who I've ordered from in past years and what I paid.Then I went online to find the lowest price before I order.Well here's what I found.My favorite bulk tobacco cost more than twice what it cost just five years ago.At this rate the time may soon come when young folks will decide that they have better things to do with their limited funds than start burning them up in a pipe.Those folks like myself who basicly live on fixed incomes will choose less costly tobacco if we can find it,or maybe just smoke less..Yeah I know pipe smoking is still cheaper than other forms of smoking..A Cadallic is cheaper than a Rolls.That doesn't mean anything though if you can only afford a Ford.

 

[PipePuffer]

Tobacco prices will probably continue to inflate much faster than general inflation due to the way tobacco is taxed and regulated. You can hedge against it by cellaring tobacco, which is what I do. In a few years, I will be living on a fixed income as well and I have been building some stock. If I could do the same with gasoline, I would.

 

[CLRV]

I've been thinking about this on and off for a while since I've started posting on BoB.

I find myself to be quite prone to the sky is falling mentality; how could one not when you look around at the various other "sin tax" type products that have been severely curtailed in the past few years/decades.

My thoughts on it simply come down to the following. I am on an extremely fixed income as well as a student. Even once I'm out, there are still a huge number of factors which will restrict the "I'll pay anything for my tobacco" mentality. I'm faced with precisely the dilemma you are talking about; should I just quit smoking or make it fit because I love it?

I come down on the make it fit side of the argument. Maybe this means I find two or three blends I really love and buy as much of it as I can afford now to try and mediate the long term price increases through cellaring etc. Maybe I adapt and smoke cheaper blends. Maybe I force myself to actually learn how to carve pipes and trade them with fellow smokers for tobacco, thus justifying my tobacco habits. Maybe I start growing an acre or so of tobacco and teach myself to blend. There's always a way.

But I'm not going to stop smoking my pipes. This is America, a country quite literally founded on tobacco. We're the people who refuse to just sit there and take it. We always find a way to grow, prosper, and develop our lives. Some of our most profoundly important leaders and thinkers were pipemen, devotedly so.

To me, yes, the cost of smoking is high. But the cost of giving in, of complying with the paternalistic government trying to force us into "good health" by taxing tobacco to death is a much higher price. What's that old saying? They came for my neighbors and I said nothing, when they came for me there was no one left to speak. Yeah.

We're a tiny portion of the population, but we don't have to be bullied into submission.

 

[gandalfpc]

Tobacco will never be cheaper, or better, than it is right now - buy as much as you can and stash it away safe and sound to mature into a joy that few in the future will be able to afford...

At 10 bowls per oz:

3 bowls per day = just under 7 lbs per year.

So a 70 to 240lb cellar is not an extravagance - it is a wise investment...

 

[Greenleaf]

Until very recently, I was smoking fifty cigarettes a day. That's one fourth of my income. One fourth, I said. So, no, nothing will ever deter me from smoking all the pipe tobacco I want.

Cellaring is a great idea, so I've come up with the following plan: simply order a can of PA every month. A can will last me for several weeks maybe, so by just spending less than thirty bucks a month, I'll eventually build up quite a cellar of my favorite all-day smoke.

 

[hobie1dog]

WOW...I've never heard of anybody smoking that many cigs in one day, you must make alot of money and really reek of smoke. They just stink

 

[Anonymous]

A lot of people say that about pipe tobacco.

Way back when, nobody cared if you smoked cigarettes on an airplane, but pipes and cigars were prohibited because too many people complained they smelled bad.

:face:

 

[MisterE]

A lot of people say that about pipe tobacco.

Way back when, nobody cared if you smoked cigarettes on an airplane, but pipes and cigars were prohibited because too many people complained they smelled bad.

:face:

Boy, THOSE were the days, hahaha! I can barely remember smoking on flights....

 

[SmokeyTweed]

Buy as much of it as you can boys!(and willow) It'll be as pricey as it is up here in no time.

For those of you who think that your taxes won't be as crazy as ours remember when you guys said you'd never have healthcare?

Up here it is $240 a pound. Think about it, who thinks cellaring is crazy now? it is not about running out of good tobacco or the fact that they might take it away(which they won't) it just makes economic sense.

Or hell I'll give someone $120 to buy tobacco for me and they can keep half of what was bought. I don't even know how much tobacco you can get for $120 but i'm sure i'll come out on top. 8)

 

[Markx]

If you can grow tomatoes you can grow tobacco:

http://www.seedman.com/Tobacco.htm
http://www.thetobaccoseed.com/

 

[Doc Manhattan]

For many premade cig smokers in the US, tobacco is effectively already more than $150/lb.

In NYC, it's twice that on brand-name cigs. And yet 1.5 million New Yorkers smoke--the same number of total smokers as in Missouri, the state with the lowest cigarette taxes. Rates of smoking have been relatively flat through the last few years' higher and higher levvies. And it doesn't seem they're smoking significantly less, either.

If you want to know why tobacco prices and taxes keep going up, it's because the market says they can. Why do you think Philip Morris has backed the last half-dozen tobacco tax hikes? Very few smokers, regardless of price, boycott smoking. Some will quit; many will just keep paying.

 

[Greenleaf]

Right, who the hell is really gonna quit?

And, even the at few restaurants where you can still smoke it's usually cigarettes only. Never mind that my pipe smoke actually got me compliments at the Waffle House.

 

[Iron man]

I'm doing my part to "stick it to the man". :lol:
My beloved state of Texas doesn't receive a high-taxed cent of my tobacco spending. The one and only time I bought from an in state retailer since coming back to pipe smoking I paid almost 50 bucks for a 14 oz can of Carter Hall. I can get the same can delivered to my door from New York, Ohio, Louisiana, North Carolina, just to name a few, for under 35 bucks.
Yes, I realize every state taxes the crap out of tobacco, but as long as I can avoid state overtax I'll continue buying from out of state.
Take that, governor goodhair. :cheers:

 

[Hermit]

My beloved state of Texas doesn't receive a high-taxed cent of my tobacco spending.

The only tobacco I buy in my home state is an occasional single cigar while strolling the French Quarter.

 

[forsooth]

I've known a lot of people that have smoked more than 50 cigarettes a day. That's only 2.5 packs.

I just bought several pounds of tobacco. This will begin my stash. Two things:

1. Some say hoarding is leading to artificially higher prices.

2. With 70-240 lbs. stored, be sure to leave a will. It would be a shame for it to be thrown out.

 

[CLRV]

I updated mine once I had enough pipes/tobacco to have it make sense. Of course, hopefully that isn't needed for probate for quite a few decades, but yeah, once I have hundreds of pounds of aged awesome tobacco, that stuff needs to go to the right people in the end.