Of all the addictions, nicotine addiction is both the most harmful and the most harmless. Buying cigarettes costs the average nicotine addict about five dollars a day. The most harmful aspect of that is that each smoker gives the state a few dollars a day in the form of cigarette taxes. There are about 70,000,000 smokers. At three dollars a pack/day in taxes, $210,000,000.00 a day goes straight into the belly of the beast. That’s about 75 billion dollars a year that smokers contribute to U.S. taxing authorities.
More and more people are avoiding that tax by buying little, hand-cranked cigarette making machines for less than the cost of a carton of cigarettes. Some even grow their own tobacco.
Only a few tobacco plants are necessary to provide the leaves for a year’s supply of cigarettes. As more smokers are driven to this alternative, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms will hire the usual shills to come up with “environmentally sound” reasons to make the growing of tobacco illegal.
But, there are “environmentally sound” reasons for smokers to grow their own tobacco. Most cigarette manufacturers put all kinds of chemicals into their cigarettes. These may include ammonia, menthol, licorice, molasses, and any of 600 other chemicals.
When these chemicals are burned, they produce all kinds of complicated molecules that go straight to the lungs. These molecules may be what causes the various medical ailments to the respiratory and circulatory systems that are found in long-time smokers.
At the very least, nicotine addicts should smoke only cigarettes that do not contain any chemical additives. Winston makes such cigarettes. And, those who “roll their own” may specify pure tobacco when purchasing it in bulk.
Most who “roll their own” give up on it after awhile. It’s messy and inconvenient. But, it’s possible to buy small cigarette machines, about the size of a refrigerator laid on its side, that will produce as many as 2,500 cigarettes an hour, all in neat packages indistinguishable from those purchased in retail outlets.
These machines cost over fifty thousand dollars. A few dozen smokers who contributed to the purchase of such a machine could “rent” it from the leasing corporation that would own it, and in a matter of a couple of hours, make and package a year’s supply of cigarettes for less than a dollar a pack, getting their investment back in a year.
