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Smokers Got On A Roll

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By LAURA FRAZIER

lfrazier@tampatrib.com

Published: March 25, 2009

VALRICO - While the price of gasoline burned holes in the wallets of weary consumers last summer, one money-saving option for cash-strapped smokers caught on like wildfire.

Santiago Carrasco, store manager of Tobacco Depot on Bloomingdale Avenue, said around the time gas hit the $4-a-gallon mark, smokers with pipe dreams about saving a few bucks came in packs to his store to ask how - and how much it would cost - to roll their own cigarettes.

"Our 1-pound bags of tobacco sold, at the time, for about $12," Carrasco said. "The mathematics were something beautiful. It all worked out to about $8 a carton."

The store has a roll-your-own section with a variety of tobaccos, paper tubes with or without filters and inexpensive rolling machines for sale. Customers can also use the store's machine for free to roll their smokes.

But the do-it-yourself section that has been positively smokin' for some eight months is about to be extinguished, he said. An enormous price increase in conjunction with the new federal excise tax in effect next week has already begun to snuff it out.

Signs posted at the store warn customers that one-pound bags of tobacco - now $17.49 each - will cost $67.49 a bag or more after the tax and new wholesale and retail markups are tacked on April 1. That translates to more than $20 to roll your own carton.

"That's why Big Tobacco got behind this tax," Carrasco said. "It forces the roll-your-own consumers back to buying their product."

The only way a smoker can save money now is to decide to quit, cut back or go with a bottom-of-the-barrel budget brand that sells for around $20 plus sales tax per carton.

"Now I have to close my entire roll-your-own section," he said.

The price hike is also bad news for the farmer in Kentucky that Carrasco buys the tobacco from.

"He will be out of business," he said.

Reporter Laura Frazier can be reached at (813) 657-4523.

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