Remember when a pack of cigarettes didnt cost 2 hrs of minimum wage?!

Cigarettes only 28 RUB in Yakutsk, Google tells me this is only 80 American cents!

 

I gave up smoking in January or February this year. Fuck me, that's 8 or 9 months. I was fed up promising myself I would quit at the next price hike so I just stopped! I smoked tobacco because of the price but even that was too much for my frugal mind to bear so there you have it. Decision made! Haven't even thought about restarting! I do go to the book store in the city a lot more now and if I see something I just buy it. The cost of a couple of books and the train fare doesn't even come close to the cost of smoking over a year.

 

roll ups are popular here, mainly for this reason. packed straights are a rip-off.

 

I quit smoking in 1971 when they went up to 30 cents a pack.....;-)

 

Used to but smokes out of the vending machine back in '88 or so. Remember those days when you could just go to a vending machine and buy smokes ? I think I paid .75 a pack back then and gas was something like .86 per gallon. Damn I miss those days.

 

Im in the wrong kinda work LMAO

For the $14 dollars you paid, I just went and got a 20oz sods and three packs of salem golds for $15.26. Salem are always the highest except newport, They get an extra dollar in some places. Newport here is $6 on the high end ballpark. They are raping you guys in NYC.

 

the recreational consumption of tobacco being more popular is something i remember that i don't miss a damd bit. i also remember when the price of a candy bar jumped from a dime to 20 cents. (my parents in their day remember it being a nickle, and undoubtedly their parents a penny, and i'm not talking about bite sized minis either)

 

When I was in high-school (late 70's), there was a corner store two blocks away that sold cigarettes .10¢

As to be expected, when lunch hour came, smokers flocked to the store for their fix.

 

I switch to vaping in 2015 .
Two years ago, my doctor did an X-ray on my lungs and compared it from one five years previously .
My corpusles thickened and my lungs cleared . My lung capacity increased .

Big Tobacco, have a campaign to stop vaping, since vaping has done a major hit on their Industry.

My stamina has increased and I am more physically active.

 

40s--50s when cigarette machines were ubiquitous, they cost 20 cents and the pack came out with a nickel change in the pack after a quarter was inserted!

 

You see those old 'pull knob' cigarette vending machines repurposed. There was one at the corner fire station that was a nickel for candy..."clink.....chunk chunk.. ding oooooh".

I dunno, any way you look at it, smokes are bad news. I called on RJ Reynolds engineering as a microcontroller/bluetooth customer when they began their E-cigarette biz - it was amazing, they could smoke in the building, the guard at the lobby was smoking, they had cigarettes in the breakroom...one guy told me how many billion cigarettes they cranked out every year...Billions.. And what was right next to the building? Why it was the giant Reynolds Memorial Cemetery.

 

One day it will take a wheelbarrow full of cash to buy a sack of groceries.

 

It's almost that, today !! Even ramen noodles are a quarter a pop now....

 

No wonder MAGA wants to bring that all back, .75 cents an hour, with the current inflation

 

no, but i remember when both were less then a dollar. as was a hamburger and a gallon of gas.
(never got into the tobacco thing. only thing i ever smoked was unlawful at the time)

 

They were around 5 dollars a pack when I started. My same brand today is 17.40. (⁠눈⁠‸⁠눈⁠)

 

Here is an inflation calculator .
Remember, when minimum wage was $ 3.35 an hour ,1981-1993. To make it in today's world, you have to be making 18+ an hour .
In many Red States, minimum wage is only $ 7.50 to $ 8.25, which roughly equates to $11.28 .

Inflation Calculator | Find US Dollar's Value From 1913-2023

 

Tobacco was first experienced by that Spanish, when the Totonacan leaders offered it to Cortes and his men .
But it spread to all parts of the Americas from Mexico, much like Coffee did from the Caribbean Islands .
They made it addictive over the years.
But now, it seems like vaping is taking over the traditional form of smoking, which does less damage to the Human body .

 

Worked for a tobacco company quality unit, recruited for my pharmaceutical background. I just have to ask, if you're living on a minimum wage income, why do you smoke? It's expensive, and the first thing you should do is trim your expenses. Consider, about half the cost of a pack/carton of cigarettes is taxes

I remember when minimum wage was $1.25/hr, and a gallon of gas was $0.25. Minimum wage has AWAYS been entry level wage, and has NEVER been what you set a your goal in life, it's a starting point. You work at McDonald's to get your foot in the working life door, then move up like normal people with a work ethic.