Tobacco users stockpile products before new tax

Carolyn Yocham, left, stocks up on cigarettes at the Briggs Tobacco Outlet as Bliss Gibson rings up the total. Yocham made the $500 purchase March 31 – the day before a federal tobacco tax drastically increased prices. (Photo by Christina Good Voice)

By Christina Good Voice and Jami Custer
Staff Writers

BRIGGS, Okla. – Like many tobacco users on March 31, Carolyn Yocham stocked up on tobacco products one day before a new federal tobacco tax went into effect.

She bought 22 cartons of cigarettes, seven rolls of chewing tobacco and 12 boxes of cigars, but they weren’t all for her.

Yocham, a 61-year-old administrator at a Tahlequah residential care facility, purchased more than $500 worth of tobacco products, most of which were for the facility’s residents.

“I work at a residential care facility where people have a limited income, and I’m getting them their cigarettes before they go sky high,” she said. “I might have to quit smoking. (The tax) is not good. Not good at all.”

Type of Tobacco	Old Tobacco Tax	New Tobacco Tax
Cigarettes	39 cents per pack	$1.01 per pack
Small Cigars	$1.83 per 1,000	$50.33 per 1,000
Large Cigars	20.8 percent of price	52.8 percent of price
Chewing Tobacco	20 cents per pound	50 cents per pound
Snuff	56 cents per pound	$1.51 per pound
Pipe Tobacco	$1.10 per pound	$2.83 per pound
Roll-Your-Own	$1.10 per pound	$24.78 per pound
Cigarette Papers	1 cent per 50	3 cents per 50
Cigarette Tubes	2 cents per 50	6 cents per 50

The new federal tobacco tax took affect April 1 and increased taxes on all tobacco products – some drastically. For example, the tax on a pack of cigarettes jumped from 39 cents to a $1.01.

Yocham, a smoker since age 16, recently switched from Virginia Slims to the Echo brand, which is about half the price.

Before her switch, she paid about $40 for a carton of Virginia Slims each week. If she had kept smoking Virginia Slims, she would be spending an extra $7 dollars per carton under the new tax.

Instead Yocham now pays $30.40 per carton of Echos, up from the $23.95 price she paid before April 1.

“I’ve always smoked a pack a day,” she said. “Personally, I think the tax is terrible because of everything else is going so much higher, and with the economy like it is people are depressed and they do need an ‘out’ someway.”

Dottie Dorsel, a 59-year-old Player’s Club representative at Cherokee Casino Tahlequah, also bought cigarettes on March 31. Although she didn’t stockpile like other tobacco users, she’s not happy with the new tax either.

“The expense is just getting overwhelming,” she said. “It is an addiction, and the price is getting to be ridiculous. I know physically, mentally and financially, I need to cut back.”

Dorsel said she smoked three packs a day until the 2008 tax hike took effect. She then cut down to two packs a day.

“I’m hoping to get it to where I smoke one pack a day or less than a pack a day,” she said. “All of us want to quit. That would be the ideal situation, but it’s not going to happen, I’m not going to go cold turkey.”

Dorsel said she spends about $38 a week on cigarettes, which adds up to more than $1,900 a year. Luckily, she said she doesn’t have to worry about picking her cigarettes over living essentials.

Need Help Quitting? Cherokee Nation Smoke Cessation: (918) 453-5612 Oklahoma Tobacco Helpline: 1-800-QUIT-NOW Oklahoma State Department of Health: (405) 271-3619, http://.ok.gov/health Oklahoma SWAT (Students Working Against Tobacco): www.okswat.com Tobacco Stops With Me: http://ok.gov/stopswithme Breath Easy: http://www.ok.gov/breatheeasyok/

“I’m not in the situation – thank goodness because of my job – that I have to worry about cigarettes or food, but I do have to watch (the cost,”) she said. “I live by myself. But I pity the people who have children, not only for what the children are exposed to but because their addiction to cigarettes is going to cost them, and they’re going to have to make a decision.”

Dorsel said she smokes a cigarette with her coffee each morning and throughout the day if she gets stressed. But despite the higher taxes, it doesn’t bother her.

“We all know it’s been coming,” she said. “Do I have a problem with it? No, it’s like a sin tax. I’m paying for my addiction, either physically, mentally or ultimately financially.”

Other tobacco users have taken a different approach and decided to quit because of increasing tobacco prices.

Linda Smith, a Cherokee citizen from Dewey, Okla., said she smoked for 50 years before deciding to quit in March because cigarettes were getting to be too expensive.

“They were pricing me out of smoking,” Smith said. “I smoked five cartons a month. They used to be $14.75, which wasn’t too bad. I could afford that. But when they went to $22.75, I couldn’t afford that, and that’s just a little over $100 a month.”

Smith said the new tax increase would probably force other smokers and tobacco users, especially lower-income users, to quit as well.

“They are going to have to quit smoking because they are not going to be able to afford it,” she said. “The poor people aren’t going to be able to afford cigarettes whatsoever. They will have to go without food if they want to smoke.”

She said when she decided to quit smoking she used the Cherokee Nation’s smoke cessation classes to aid her.

“I went to the non-smoking class that the Cherokees put on, and I worked it around my smoking so that I ran out of cigarettes the night before so that when I woke up in the morning I would have no cigarettes in the house. Therefore I wouldn’t have an opportunity to smoke,” she said.

Surprisingly, she said it was easier to quit than she thought it would be and that she should have quit a long time ago for health reasons.

“If you really make up your mind to quit, then you can quit,” Smith said.