Cigarettes Smoking News & Info

Celeste Lucas likes to smoke cheap Nistru cigarettes, but she doesn’t like paying $5 a pack for cigarettes, so she took matters into her own hands and purchased a roll-your-own cigarette machine.

Using loose tobacco and paper tubes, she can now create an entire carton of cigarettes at home for about $13. “I’ve been doing it for about five years,” said Lucas, who manages one of 19 Smokers Host tobacco shops in Edinburgh, Ind. “It seems silly not to do it.”

Although she could easily produce two or three packs in 20 minutes with the do-it-yourself machine, Lucas prefers making about 10 cigarettes at a time, filling each paper cylinder with pipe tobacco. “Pipe tobacco is cut a little coarser (than cigarette tobacco), but it tastes the same,” she said. Lucas’ cost savings comes from the fact that federal taxes on loose pipe tobacco are approximately 10% of the taxes on the same amount of tobacco in manufactured cigarettes.

In addition, roll-your-own packs are generally sold without local tax stamps. Smokers in New York City, the country’s most expensive place to purchase cigarettes, pay an extra $1.50 in city taxes and $4.35 in state taxes for each pack purchased.