Categories
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· Business (Tobacco)
· Tobacco Control
· Tax
USA, by State
· California
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Price increases, health concerns and restrictions on where people can light up lead to a 8.1% drop in sales in the most recent fiscal year.
Jump to full article: Los Angeles Times, 2010-07-28
Author: Tiffany Hsu
Intro: Taking a puff in California is getting to be a drag, with health concerns and high prices pushing cigarette sales in the most recent fiscal year to their steepest plunge in a decade.
Californians bought 8.1% fewer cigarettes in fiscal 2009 -- which ended June 30 -- than a year earlier, according to a report Tuesday from the California State Board of Equalization. The steepest previous sales drop was the 11.2% dive in fiscal 1999 from a year earlier.
Since peaking in fiscal 1980 with 2.8 billion packs, cigarette sales has tumbled 65.6% to 972 million packs, the state tax board said. That's a drop of about 3.5% -- or 59 million packs -- each year.
And it's not just that people are making do with fewer cigarettes -- the percentage of smokers has been cut in half since 1985, according the California Department of Public Health.
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