Tobacco is a multi-million-dollar cash crop here in South Carolina, and Big Tobacco makes sure our state legislators do NOT forget who holds the wallet. As a result, we have one of the lowest cigarette taxes in the nation, and any effort to increase that meager tax is quickly smothered by Big Tobacco. All of this means that South Carolina stays awash in cheap cigarettes. Name-brand smokes sell for about $4.75 a pack, but the real stunner is the cornucopia of cheap generics for sale: $4.17, $3.80, $3.20 a pack. Now, there’s a new generic in stores here. It’s called Traffic, and it only sells for $2.99 a pack.
Wow, only $3 to poison yourself?! Gosh, Big Tobacco sure makes sickness so affordable! Even the poorest smoker can dig under the sofa cushions for enough coins to buy a pack of that toxic waste!
Deadly addiction at bargain-basement prices! Disease on closeout!
It’s so affordable to just keep smoking around here, and it’s just as affordable to keep relapsing. Yet the inevitable results of this self-destruction cycle are NOT affordable, and are breaking bank accounts...and families.
Can’t raise the cigarette tax, won’t fund anti-smoking clinics, can’t shut up about smokers “driving up” medical costs. Big Tobacco laughing all the way back to the bank, senators pocketing all that sooty cash, smokers staying hooked on an easy drug, and the poorest rural quitters left with few resources to combat cheap temptations.
I am, with all my heart, so incredibly thankful that I am no longer a caged animal in this circus of hateful greed and underhanded malice.
STORM: 823
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