A New Status Symbol

When you slide a crisp 10 dollar bill across the counter in your corner New York City bodega for a pack of "premium" smokes, don't expect any change. That's the price that the small stores in Gotham are charging.

My question: With cigarette prices skyrocketing (along with everything else for that matter), will cigarettes become a luxury item? Cigarettes have always been something that transcended class and socioeconomic status. Smokers are represented in just about every demographic from the homeless to the aristocracy and everywhere in between. And while the habit becomes less and less socially acceptable and fashionable all the time, people are still going to do it because, well, it's like the most fun legal thing to do in the United States besides taunting hipsters and people who listen to Prairie Home Companion.

Maybe these prices will make smoking cool again. People will look at us in the same light as people who drive Mercedes Benzes. "Ooh, that guy has good taste and must be successful because he has a Marlboro Light dangling from his cancer-ridden mouth."

Another good thing about the astronomical cigarette prices is that I now have a very good excuse as to why I don't want to bum out cigarettes. On Monday, the first day of the increase, I was walking towards my office on Hudson Street, gleefully smoking my 50 cent cigarette when a guy heading due east on Spring Street in semi yelled out his window and asked for a cigarette. I yelled back, "Sorry, they're 10 bucks a pack now!" He understood and there were no hard feelings.

Like the price of petrol, I am not going to let the price of cigarettes bother me. I will only quit because of health reasons in due time. Even though I am more prone to cancer now. I still think smoking is cool and now it's even cooler that it costs $10 per pack.