How To Quit Smoking Or At Least Buy Cheap Cigarettes

My wife has tried to quit smoking many times but has yet to fully succeed. It the meantime, we need to buy cigarettes as cheaply as possible to feed her addiction. There are many listings for making these purchases online, but we never even thought about those until I began doing research for this Hub. Therefore, please keep in mind that the information presented here does not include that possible option.

Pam has tried the inhaler and the patch. She has attempted to quit cold turkey and done what she could to wean herself gradually. She has studied this disease that contributes to everything from COPD to pancreatic cancer. Nor has she ignored psychological factors, educating herself to understand every emotional nuance of either conscious or subconscious emotion that bind her to the cigarette like tar blackened iron chains. She has tried going it alone and has tried getting the job done with support groups a phone call away and family members giving her all possible help.

As of today, she has hammered a thirty-five year habit down from a four pack a day peak to one pack a day, give or take. Lights. She can't stand Ultra Lights. 100's, so that she can avoid burning her arthritic fingers and still utilize a goodly chunk of length while leaving the worst concentrations of tars and other toxins with the discarded butts.

Since she still requires roughly four cartons of poison-puffers per month to remain emotionally functional--with her many physical and emotional problems, that is a crucial issue--we had to find out where to buy not only cheap, but the cheapest cigarettes. Having abandoned a two year old Colorado home to foreclosure in April of 2009, we are currently living off grid in Arizona with only a portable generator for electric power, limited fixed income, and no employer willing to hire me on a ten dollar bet.

So...just where might that bargain basement pricing be found?

It has long been known that buying on Indian Reservations enables the buyer to avoid a measure of otherwise applicable taxes. This is due to the fact that Native American tribes exist by treaty as sovereign nations and thus cannot be required to levy as much tribute as will be extorted from the average consumer in, say, Denver or Phoenix.

However, the only times Pam and I have found it worthwhile to shop on any Reservation were the times we traveled the north-south route between Montana and Arizona a few years back. Then it was a simple matter to make a brief stop in Idaho, pulling off of Interstate 15 to pick up lunch and a few cartons of smokes at Fort Hall. Since our current Cochise County home is simply too many miles away from the nearest Reservation, we had to scope out other sources from which to buy cheap cigarettes. Until she can finally quit smoking once and for all, there is simply no other option.

Pam currently smokes GPC 100 Lights in the box if she can get them. In Sierra Vista, the city to which we're referring when we say we're "...going to town", The Beverage House has the best price (as of June 2009) at $58.58 per carton including taxes. Everywhere else is higher, at least a little and sometimes a lot. Just five miles from our home, a Canyon General convenience store and gas station combo has them at the second best price, coming in a touch under $60.00, making that the best option any time I'm not headed the additional fifteen miles to Sierra Vista on other errands anyway.

We were braced to endure this pricing as we could, having found nothing cheaper, when Pam's son Zachary explained about the Mexican border. He began smoking Marlboro reds at the age of thirteen. Sometimes he's managed to quit for extended periods of time, though the pressures of life have sucked him back in more than once. At the age of twenty-three, having lived in Sierra Vista since birth, he knows every price of every cigarette at every outlet in all of Cochise County. According to Zach, the very very best place to buy is at the Ueta duty free store in Douglas.

The procedure is both weird and remarkable, but it works:

1. Buy cigarettes at the duty free store.

2. Leave the cigarettes with the store, walk across the street, and wait by the lamp post.

3. When the store clerk walks across and hands you the bag with the cigarettes in it, carry the cigarettes down the pedestrian walkway past the border guard and into Mexico.

4. A few dozen yards inside our neighboring country to the south, cross the street, walk back up to the incoming border guard station, show him your passport (required since June 1, 2009), watch him swipe your passport through the scanner to document your passage, and then walk back into the United States.

5. Get into your car, which you parked behind the duty free store, and drive the forty miles back home (sixty miles if you live in Sierra Vista).

To go through all of that, wouldn't you just about need to be getting those smokes for free? Just about, and that's a fact. But while they're not literally handing them out as charity, the duty free effect does indeed allow purchasers to buy cigarettes at a far cheaper price tag than anywhere else. I made that trip today to get a carton for Pam. A few examples of today's carton prices at the store were:

1. Sheriff (brand previously unknown to us, but labeled "Made in USA"): $ 9.00

2. Pall Mall.............................................................................................: $10.00

3. GPC..................................................................................................: $15.00

4. Basic.................................................................................................: $16.00

5. Marlboro............................................................................................: $21.00

With pricing like that, why on Earth wouldn't I simply buy four cartons at one time, supply Pam's habit for a month, and be done with it? Oh, I would. I would. Unfortunately, there's a legal limitation on how many cigarettes you can buy at the duty free store, and that limit is one carton per person per month. If Pam could accompany me on these forays and carry a carton of her own into Mexico and back, that would help...but her health would never allow her to walk that far without terrible risk. So that's out.

There are people who flout the law, returning to repeat the purchase-and-walk process every week or every two weeks. I met one such today, a man in his twenties who lives in Sierra Vista who told me he does it on a regular two week cycle and has been doing so for years. At first he tried to tell me that two cartons per month were legal. When I questioned that, he admitted,

"It's okay as long as the same people aren't on duty."

"Sure," I agreed, seeing the logic, "But how can you safely predict that?"

Even so, a $44.00 discount on one carton per month is still worth making the trip when that $44.00 provides the lion's share of our weekly food budget or an oil change for the car. If you live near the Mexican border, you can buy cheap cigarettes at a duty free store like nowhere else. Not that Pam being able to quit smoking once and for all wouldn't trump all else.

And not that the pricing doesn't provide food for thought: Nearly 75% of the cost of a cigarette in 2009 goes for taxes. That, however, is another story for another Hub.

Thanks for reading,

Ghost32