While Cadiz smokers aren’t pleased by the news, the tax won’t accomplish what the Surgeon General’s warnings couldn’t, either — make them quit.
“People who quit smoking generally quit for a reason other than cost,” Deborah Johnson said.
Johnson, a smoker for about 40 years, hadn’t known of the planned tax hike, so didn’t stock up in anticipation.
As Johnson scratched off a lotto ticket inside the Tobacco Patch, a newly purchased carton of Viceroys nearby, employees compared which Surgeon General warning went on different companies’ brands.
When Johnson learned that Tennessee’s cigarette tax is now 10 cents cheaper than Kentucky’s, she saw an opportunity to save.
“I’m back and forth to Nashville all the time,” she said.
The hike on cigarette taxes was the first in 30 years for Kentucky, which, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has the highest adult smoking rate, at 31 percent.
For the rest of this story, please see this week's edition of The Cadiz Record.
