The cost of a pack of cigarettes is now two dollars higher.
Last week, the Pennsylvania legislature gave its OK to a $2 per pack tax on cigarettes sold in the city. While the tax is expected to bring in millions for Philadelphia schools, it’s likely to change the cigarette-buying habits of Northeast residents who are close enough to the city line to buy their smokes in Bucks or Montgomery counties.
Sellers in the suburbs undoubtedly will see increases in their cigarette business while sales of smokes in Philly, especially in the Far Northeast, surely will drop.
Mark Sablowsky expects cigarette sales to plummet at his two stores — Craft Beer Outlet on the 9900 block of Frankford Avenue and his Beer Outlet at 12131 Knights Road.
Interviewed yesterday, the last day before the new tax took effect, he estimated his cigarette sales will drop as much as 90 percent. He doubts, he said, that he will be selling smokes six months from now.
Many of his customers don’t realize the tax will go into effect today, but when they do, he said, they’ll probably drive to Bensalem.
“I’m very close to the border,” he said.
He said he isn’t sure how the new tax will affect cigarette sales at stores that are farther away from the suburbs, but he thinks most smokers will just buy outside the city. That means, he said, that the tax really won’t be the financial boom to the schools that it is hoped to become.
Right now, brand name cigs cost about $6.15 a pack outside the city. But in the city, that additional two dollars added to the per-pack price means a 10-pack carton of cigarettes will be more than $86 in Philadelphia. A $20-per-carton savings seems a pretty good incentive to travel into the suburbs for smokes.
Andrea Siegfried of Bensalem Beer & Soda on Street Road expects her cigarette sales to rise between 20 and 30 percent.
Siegfried said her store sells cigarettes for her customers’ convenience. They’re not high-profit items. The per-pack profit is about a nickel, she said, adding she doesn’t expect to increase her stock to handle expanded demand from Philadelphians.
“We carry a lot now,” she said. ••
