perfidy

An update to my earlier smoking post - Smoking, it's all good. I went into the local smoke shop to get some American Spirit smokes; explaining that for a while now, my throat has been getting raw from smoking. The smoking nut explained that it was probably the result of the new FSC cigarettes - "Fire Safe Cigarettes," which came into being early last year loaded with an additive that supposedly helps the cigarette extinguish itself if left unattended.

It seems that lots of people have complained about the additives. And my sore throats started pretty much from when the change was made. So, the smoking nut recommended the roll your own path, because the FSC has not extended to hand-rolled papers.

This was just before Christmas, and since then I've been almost entirely smoking hand-rolled smokes. I've seen several benefits:

• My throat feels about a thousand times better.
• I smoke about half as many hand-rolled as regular smokes.  Not because  of the difficulty of making them or anything like that, I just smoke less.
• I've learned a new skill.  A very minor skill, but hey.
• I pay a lot less.

When I first went in, almost exactly a month ago, I bought a variety pack of pouches of tobacco, a box of 200 filter cigarette tubes, and a clever tobaccy-packing thingy.  All that cost about $30.  So I bought a zippo lighter and fluid to bring it up to the cost of a carton of cowboy killers.  (Strangely, in the middle of rural Virginia, one of the five zippos they had in stock had Chief Wahoo on it.  So I had to get it.)  All that lasted until after New Years', when I bought some more tobacco, in bigger more cost-effective tins and another box of tubes.  In the time that I normally would have smoked at least three cartons - $120 - I've spent $100, of which $25 was lighter and tobaccopackythingy and won't have to be bought again; and I still have half a pound of tobacco and almost a full box of tubes left, which should last me another couple weeks at least.

So, in recurring costs, we have $75 for a month and a half, or more, of smoking v. $225 for the five cartons of regular Marlboros I'd have smoked over the same period.  So, I have cut my smoking costs by two thirds and it could go lower if I buy the tobacco in even larger quantities.

Not bad.