Originally Posted By: dave1251
Yeah I am not even 35 yet, but I will only have a drink of alcohol once every blue moon. But I still enjoy my cigar every now and again.
Getting good cigars up here gets harder and harder all the time. While Cubans are legal, the marketing legislation has made it all but impossible for dedicated tobacco shops to survive.
In this province, anything with a pharmacy cannot sell tobacco. So, Superstore (a big grocery chain here that has a pharmacy department) sets up separate tobacco shops on site, with a separate entrance and everything. If under 18 year olds are allowed in a store, then tobacco products must be hidden. Smoking isn't allowed in any businesses, so those shops that used to sell expensive, single cigars and have couches and newspapers and chess boards or the like or allow pipe smokers to try blends no longer exist, either.
Of course, that's all separate from the high tobacco taxes we have here. I don't think there's a pack of smokes available for under $11. The taxation policies alone almost killed chewing tobacco. For years, the government would regularly raise the prices of cigarettes, incrementally, of course. A little bit here and there is a minor deterrence, but brings in the revenue. Someone noticed that they hadn't raised the taxes on loose tobacco (including chew) for over a decade. They decided to "fix" it all at once, almost tripling the price of chew. National Tobacco (who markets Skoal and Copenhagen up here) had to shrink the package to bring the price below the tipping point. Then, the government started raising it again, so the packages had to get larger again, since the small packages hit a tipping point. Yeesh.
