| How to save over 80% on Cigarettes Almost all in taxes |
|---|
|
You clicked on this link expecting a scam. You knew what you have heard of me had to be true. I regret you are to be disappointed. I am not going to provide a list of black market sources nor tell you how to smuggle your own. Yes, I know, quit smoking. Been there, done that, came back smoking more. Next bright idea. I do not know nationwide or worldwide cigarette prices nor do I intend to research the subject therefore the "over 80%" title. This may apply in some form to worldwide. If you are a smoker in the US you have noticed the price increase by $10 per carton in the last few years due to revenue raising, piratical lawsuits. If you have been paying attention you have noticed the only thing those additional revenues are not being spent on is health care for smokers which was the crux of the lawsuits. It is time to put an end to that. But please not everyone as they will start taxing cigarette tobacco directly. Here in Tampa, Florida, US the lowest price I can find off the Seminole reservations is $18 per carton for Austins at Circle K. The price goes up to $26 at the same chain for the non-generic name brands such as Winston. Austins are essentially never on sale since the last price increase while the name brands are regularly on sale for $2-3 off. Just a few years ago Austins were $10 a carton and on sale about once a month for $8. The political lie is the higher prices will induce people to stop smoking but if they really do the revenue will dry up. That is clearly not the intention. Do the conversion from $US to your own currency and look up your country's percent of smokers and compare to the US. The objective is to profit from addiction just like all other drug dealers. If I go instead to a local Eckerd Drug Store I can get a 6 ounce can of Bugler cigarette tobacco for $7. That lasts me as long as two cartons of cigarettes. $7 of loose tobacco replaces $36 worth of tailor mades at the lowest price I know of. That is over 80% savings. Notice also a little old American tradition creeps in with terms like tailor mades and store boughts. Makes you feel like a cowboy. I do not do the cowboy routine although I once had a colleague who insisted it was a great attention getter in a staff meeting. I use a $4 machine from a local tobacconist. It is very simple. The tobacconist sells Bugler for $12 so I don't buy tobacco there. It took a couple ounces of tobacco to learn to roll consistently good looking cigarettes. The failures smoked quite as well as the cosmetically good ones. I somehow manage to break a machine ever couple month but at the price I don't care. Bugler is quite good enough for me. The next higher price at the drug store is Top at $9. It tastes slightly milder and rolls a bit better. And I occasionally splurge the extra $2. The local tobacco shop has more brands to choose. I have tried several but find myself quite satisfied with Bugler. It is so mild I do not see a need for filters1 but there are filters available as well as fancier machines permitting both filter and non-filter cigarettes to be made easily. Roll your own tobacco also comes in menthol. If you prefer menthol do not give up because it has too much menthol. You are supposed to mix it with non-mentholated tobacco to get the amount you like. I like an occasional menthol and roughly half and half suits my taste. In addition you get something else, rather you do not get something else. You do not get additives in the tobacco. And you do not get saltpeter in the paper to keep them burning. These cigarettes will go out on you if you put them down. This would be an environmentalist paradise with everything natural were it not demon tobacco involved. Even the paper is made from rice not trees. One of the fake issues used against tobacco companies is they regulate the amount of nicotine2 in cigarettes. I say it is fake as nicotine is the addictive substance. If the objective were to sell more cigarettes then a rational cigarette manufacturer would reduce the amount of nicotine in each cigarette. Instead they adjust it so it is always the same for a uniform product. When you roll your own there will be variations in the nicotine content over the years and by production lots. Growing seasons and locations vary just as for grapes. This is not particularly noticeable but it does occur. Another benefit for me has been that a 6 ounce can lasts as long as two cartons. Each can comes with 200 to 230 papers indicating one carton worth of tobacco but it lasts me as long as two cartons. My tobacco consumption is cut in half without the least additional effort. Your mileage will certainly vary. I can also say after rolling my own for four months3 I am getting a large pile of unused papers indicating I am producing under 200 cigarettes per 6 ounces so my consumption is somewhat less than half. The question everyone asks is, how do you carry them around? I was in the grocery store and found a container like a Rubbermaid or Tupperware product. They were four for a dollar. You might have to pay a dollar for a single name brand container. It is square and about dimensions of a cigarette and is high enough to hold nearly forty cigarettes. It fits in my shirt pocket and is tough enough to go in my pants pocket and I can even sit on it without damaging the cigarettes. Actually that would hurt so I haven't really tried.
Revision, November 2001: Since then I found a metal cigarette container in the drugstore tobacco section. It is cheap aluminum with stamped filigree and overpriced at four dollars. But it holds twenty and does not have the bulk of the plastic container and fits in my shirt pocket. And I am ready to prowl antique stores for those 1930s containers just for the elegance of it.Revision 2: Detroit Tobacco carries newly made metal cases using the old dies at least for the outside design. The problem is the retainers are mounted to hold king and hundred size cigarettes not the 70 mm size was they were originally. It is not a good solution unless you use those sizes. After getting the hang of making them, each takes less than a minute to make. The actual time is in seconds but I do not challenge myself with production rate. After the first few hundred I barely had to pay attention to what I am doing to make them. I have taken to making them while reading my email and newsgroups. What I never solved was the tobacco hanging out of each end in rolling so I cheat. I use a manicure scissors (also from Eckerd for $8 and made well enough to be in my will) to trim the ends. Solved this problem. It is caused by most rollers being 78mm long and the papers being 70mm so all that is needed is a 70mm roller. Easier said than done. Ziggy comes to the rescue. On the left column scroll down to the middle of the page "Rollers and tube injectors. On that page find Gizeh Metal Rolling Machine. $8.99 and well constructed. The pins holding in the rollers tend to back out ever few hundred cigs but a few taps with a small hammer correct that problem. There are slightly cheaper plastic models but these last at least twice as long.
One thing I still do not get is a uniform diameter. They vary noticeably. I had always wondered why the cigarette holders in old movies and pictures had fluted openings like the bell of a trumpet instead of the straight cylindrical openings of today's. The light dawned in realizing they were for handmade cigarettes which do not have a uniform diameter. (I can speculate that at one time tailor mades were of different diameters. I do not know.) Starting this brought back an old memory. I remembered my grandmother once telling me my grandfather rolled his own but would only take his perfect ones to work with him. There was vanity in him, a man I barely got to know before he died. For the entrepreneurs among you, I know what you are thinking and forget it. This is a free country and anyone can go into any business they wish as long as it is legal and don't pay attention to that man behind the curtain. You cannot go into cigarette manufacture without paying the same $10 per carton the companies involved in the tobacco settlements pay. America! What a free country! All future manufacturers are responsible for what others did and required to comply with judgments in cases to which they were not party. Ya gotta love it. Loose cigarette tobacco is about the only product not noticeably hit with by the piratical litigation. That is why not everyone should switch or they will attack it also. If you remember the price increase came in two roughly $5 steps. The second was only against cigarette companies. The first was against all tobacco products. I do not know if loose tobacco was included in the first but cigars and pipe tobacco were so I presume it was. But at the current price it is almost as little as can be charged for something taking up that much shelf space. It is about a cheap as it can get. But if the government pirates do catch on to this, all is not lost. Even an apartment balcony can produce a good fraction of a year's supply of tobacco. Using my experience, a modest 18 ounces per plant produces the equivalent of six cartons which is two months worth at a pack a day. Use five gallon containers and lots of Miracle Gro. And that will lead to unauthorized tobacco growing becoming a felony without paying a government tax stamp just as with marijuana and the stamps will never be issued. It is the natural result of current trends. Vendors of cigarette tobacco, rolling machines, filters, seeds, growing, preparation instructions and all the rest are on the internet and easy to find with a <A href="http://www.google.com">google search</a>. I have yet to use any of them so I have no recommendations. The ones I have found appear to be as reputable as anyone of the internet.
1When I was growing up in the 1950s the family
would visit the farm of a war buddy of my father's. Tobacco was one of his
crops. I remember him saying before filters he could not sell of all of his
crop and after filters he could sell everything. His conclusion was filters
permitted lower quality tobacco. Having taken the filter off of store
boughts and compared the taste with the ones I make, I completely agree.
2While tobacco has been linked to lung cancer
and other diseases no study has ever determined which of many substances in
tobacco is the cause. Which means nicotine is not itself linked with any
disease only tobacco as a whole is linked. Studies in current cultures still
using wood for cooking and heating have found higher levels of lung cancer.
It could be the smoke of any leafy plant would have the same result. We do
not know.
3I add this in June 2002 making it sixteen
months since I started rolling my own. I am still doing it. I have not
smoked a store bought since I started. Nothing much has changed. The price
per can has gone up fifty cents or so. I found a refillable butane lighter
for six dollars which has lasted five months. A six ounce can of butane
refill is less that two dollars so I am saving money on disposable butane
lighters also. I have enough unused papers around that I could buy a five
pound bag of tobacco and probably still have some unused. I still haven't
found an antique cigarette case
Page reads: 7110
|