February 8, 1999

An Ever Dearer Habit: People of Meager Means Find Ways to Keep Smoking

---

Related Article

Cigarette Maker Raises Price 45 Cents a Pack (Nov. 24, 1998)

---

By ANDY NEWMAN

onald Pye's ocher-tipped fingers stubbed an unfiltered Pall Mall into the ashtray he keeps clipped to his wheelchair at the Cobble Hill Health Center, a nursing home in Brooklyn.

"The President says he wants to raise the price of cigarettes another 55 cents," said Pye, who has already seen the price for a pack of Pall Malls jump to $3.60, from $2.80, in recent weeks. "He does that, I'm going to make a gang, a wheelchair gang, and we're going to go out and steal money for cigarettes."

It was probably an idle threat -- though one suspects that the 84-year-old Pye, a retired Army sergeant, and the fellow smoker he calls his "gun moll," Bernice Fuller, could pull off the job if they had to. But the sentiment, echoed at homeless shelters, group homes and street corners throughout the city, is genuine.

For most smokers, the recent 45-cent-a-pack increase in the wholesale price of cigarettes was an annoyance. (It was announced in November, but its full effect was not felt in retail stores until mid-January.) But for those with little money, for whom an extra $5 or $10 a week is not a trivial sum, the sudden 20-percent rise has changed the fabric of everyday life.

Of course, nobody is forced to buy cigarettes. Smokers could always quit, and many have. One of the goals of the 55-cent Federal tax President Clinton proposed last week -- aside from raising billions of dollars in revenue -- is to cut the smoking rate by pricing many smokers out of the market. The 45-cent wholesale price increase is also seen as a deterrent by officials in the 46 states, including New York, that reached a $206 billion settlement with cigarette makers in November to compensate for the cost of treating tobacco-related illnesses. Tobacco companies raised the price to pay for the settlement.

But in places where cigarettes often serve as nerve tonic, time-killer and food substitute rolled into one, researchers have found that the habit is painfully tough to break. Elderly people, many of whom have been smoking for 50 years or more, and the mentally ill, on whom nicotine has been demonstrated to have a particularly soothing effect, are among the most stubborn smokers.

"For some of these people, the only joy they have is smoking," said Geoff Lieberman, the executive director of the Coalition of Institutionalized Aged and Disabled, an advocacy group in New York.

So instead of quitting, many are finding ways to adapt. Several people in homeless shelters and teen-agers in high schools said more smokers are selling loose cigarettes to others -- in effect, dealing to support their habits. In Cobble Hill, Ms. Fuller has given up pineapple soda, one of her few pleasures, to keep herself in Kool 100's. Heavy smokers are negotiating discounts with local shopkeepers.

For smokers on fixed incomes, the arithmetic has been particularly unforgiving.

At the start of the year, Jill F., 49, who lives at the Ivan Shapiro House, a supervised residence for mentally ill adults on West 46th Street in Manhattan, got a $6 increase in her monthly Supplemental Security Income benefits, to $935 from $929. The cost of her two-pack-a-day habit, however, has gone up about $30 a month since January 1998.

"I don't want to seem ungrateful," she said, "but inflation for the poor is about 100 million times what it is for the classes above it. If you live on coffee and doughnuts and cigarettes, the ratio of the price increase to what you're going to spend and eat is enormous."

Lately, Jill said, she has been devoting more and more time to the search for a $2 pack of cigarettes. (Prices of major brands like Marlboro and Camel now average about $3.30 a pack in New York City, with considerable variation.)

"Sometimes stores sell stale cigarettes, stuff they can't move," she said. "As long as it's regular 100's, I don't care about the taste. It could be made out of shredded newspaper."

Gordon S., a resident of Shapiro House who smokes three packs on a bad day, switched to Waves, a generic Japanese import, after Jill gave him one, but decided after a couple of cartons that they were too harsh and dry. Determined to find a way to stick with Camel Lights, he cozied up to his favorite retailer.

"I kind of wined and dined the guy," he said. "Now I get $2.50 a carton off the regular price; pay $30 instead of $32.50."

Pye and some of his neighbors at the Cobble Hill Health Center would be thrilled to get an extra $6 a month from the government. The state personal-needs allowance for nursing-home and adult-home residents on Medicaid has been $50 a month since 1987, when cigarettes cost about $1.50 a pack. The same $50 that once lasted a pack-a-day smoker all month now runs out after about two weeks.

But Pye, who has been smoking for 72 years and says only cigarettes allow him a night's sleep since he broke a hip, has no plans to quit. Neither does Ms. Fuller, 64, a retired sewing machine operator.

"I enjoy drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes," Ms. Fuller said. "I enjoy drinking tea with lemon and smoking cigarettes. I do without a lot of things, like pineapple soda, food that I want, just to buy cigarettes."

Both Pye and Ms. Fuller have relatives who slip them extra money. But another resident, Barbara Dorsut, 49, often finds herself sitting on the wall outside the entrance and begging for change for cigarettes.

"I try to be discreet," she said. "I don't do anything in the building."

Lieberman, whose group has been trying to increase the personal needs allowance, said that for many elderly and, especially, mentally ill people, cigarettes are "a really critically important issue in terms of their personal needs."

But State Senator Joseph R. Holland, the chairman of the Senate Social Services Committee, said that higher cigarette prices did not make a compelling argument to increase the allowance.

"To raise it to $75 would cost the state more than $30 million a year," said Holland, a Republican from Rockland County. "I'd rather spend that $30 million on transportation for nonpublic school students."

The Federal Government has predicted that higher cigarette prices will put a particularly big dent in teen-age smoking. But Gary Black, a tobacco industry analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein, an investment company, said such projections were too optimistic.

"Young people are very insensitive to price increases," he said. "The brand image is the most important to them, and they smoke the least number of cigarettes per week. The people who quit when the price goes up are older people."

As school let out one day late last month, Alejandro Soto, a ninth grader at Park West High School in Manhattan and a smoker for 4 of his 17 years, stood in front of a delicatessen on 10th Avenue smoking a Newport and discussing economics. Higher prices mean fewer young people can afford a whole pack, which has made his friend Mike B., who sells loose cigarettes, an increasingly big man on campus.

Mike, who refused to give his full last name, confirmed that business was good. His regular price for a single cigarette went up to 30 cents, from 25, when the pack price went up, but he said he often demanded more, and got it.

Alejandro said, "If people get desperate enough, they'll pay 50 cents for a cigarette. They'll pay a dollar."

Outside the Atlantic Avenue Armory, a homeless shelter in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, several of the men waiting for contractors to stop and offer a few hours of minimum-wage work said that their habits had changed.

But Richie Jones, 32, a pack-a-day smoker who lives part time in the shelter, said he was not quite ready to quit. "The price has definitely put more pressure on me to stop," he said, "but I haven't done anything about it." He will wait, he said, until the price hits $5 a pack.

"That's going to be the best thing that ever happened to America," he said. "You'll have to be crazy to smoke then."