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Apparently the federal tax on cigarettes is going up to $10 per carton, a $6.10 increase. The state of Nevada, feeling the recessionary blows to its budget is going to increase the state tax on cigarettes by $10 also. So people are stocking up in advance.
Look at this from today's newspaper (emphasis added): "The average smoker is buying at least 1 1/2 times her usual number of packs in the weeks leading up to the change, Cowan said. Even smokers who stick with their habit will change how they consume, perhaps moving toward cheaper, generic brands." So I guess the average smoker is a woman, sorry to say. I don't know why that bothers me, it just jangles a little when I read it, I suppose because I think the sentence could have been worded to be gender-neutral, but I think I'm just used to 'his' being the default in our language when referring to a group made up of both men and women.
Our houses here are really close together, and the foul-mouthed neighbors behind us and their baying hound dog might as well be sitting in our yard for the lack of privacy. They got in a huge argument last week about how selfish he is because he went out to buy cigarettes and left her there with one effing cigarette to last her five effing hours and didn't hurry back to put her out of her misery; he only effing thinks of himself. I was thinking 'chalk up another evil attributed to smoking - it breaks ups families.' Not that there's any danger of those two breaking up, they seem to thrive on her verbally abusing him. Yesterday they were discussing the price of cigarettes by the carton and now I know it had something to do with this new state tax.
