Prices up & places to smoke down, smokers purchase more "Loosies"

[Liberal_in_LA]

A Cigarette for 75 Cents, 2 for $1: The Brisk, Shady Sale of ‘Loosies’

--------

Itinerant cigarette vendors have long been a fixture in some parts of the city, like bodegas that sell individual cigarettes in violation of state law. But with cigarette prices up and the number of smoke-friendly places down, the black market for loosies is now thriving on the streets.

The administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has outlawed smoking in restaurants, bars and playgrounds, and outside hospital entrances. Even city parks, beaches and pedestrian plazas are now off limits to smokers. Then there have been successive rounds of taxes — the most recent one, a $1.60 rise in the state tax in July — that raised the price of a pack of cigarettes to $12.50 at many Midtown newsstands.

“The tax went up, and we started selling 10 times as much,” Mr. Warner said. “Bloomberg thinks he’s stopping people from smoking. He’s just turning them onto loosies.”

----------

Mr. Warner said he bought his cigarettes — almost always Newports — for a bit over $50 a carton from smugglers who get them in states like Virginia, where the state tax is well under a dollar a pack. He then resells them for 75 cents each, two for $1 or $8 for a pack ($7 for friends).

Mr. Warner said he and each of his two partners took home $120 to $150 a day, profit made from selling about 2,000 cigarettes, mostly two at a time. Each transaction is a misdemeanor offense.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/05/nyregion/05loosie.html?src=twrhp

[On the Road]

1. They Have Loosie-Dealers all Over the Third World

one more indication that the working class in the US is descending to that level.

[999998th word]

2. That pot is getting even warmer.

[ReggieVeggie]

3. so you can't sell individual cigarettes?

because the tobacco companies want their excess profit?

[NeedleCast]

5. You can't sell loose cigarettes because there are laws against it

Most of those laws are to protect sin taxes on sales.

[KamaAina]

4. Hell, the market up the street from me had those well over ten years ago

then again, that was at 148th and Broadway, not midtown.