$2-per-pack tax welcomed by some, endured by others

The cigarette tax approved by Pennsylvania lawmakers Tuesday will soon make a pack of $6.65 Newports cost $2 more at the corner store that Hanif Woods patronizes in West Philadelphia. But don't think for a minute that he or his friends will bother hustling to the nearby county line for a price break.

Even with the promise of much lower prices in the suburbs - a short drive from Jesly Food Market at 60th Street and Girard Avenue - the 24-year-old Woods didn't expect his shopping habits to change when the levy goes into effect.

Call it apathy, or, as Woods put it: "People are lazy."

No one in his circle of friends has been talking about the tax hike to help fund the city's ailing public schools.

"People are so submissive these days, you just take it and you roll with it," said Woods, whose resignation about the higher cost of his habit conflicted with a disenchantment about the tax-for-schools public policy underpinning the change.

"There's millions of dollars in the prison system and there's no money for the school system? It's ass-backward," Woods said as he stood outside the corner grocery at a sleepy six-point intersection that appeared to have been a major hub of commerce decades ago.

The state Senate voted, 39-11, late Tuesday afternoon to approve a bill that would impose the tax as a way to help Philadelphia schools avert closures and further cuts to already diminished programs.

The bill goes to Gov. Corbett, who has said he will sign it. It was unclear Tuesday how soon the tax would go into effect and how quickly the School District would begin receiving the revenue, said Mark McDonald, a spokesman for Mayor Nutter.

The tax would help generate funds to address an $80 million school budget shortfall, and School Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. had said that without the money, he would be forced to close schools and lay off teachers and staff.

Debated and kicked around as a political football for more than a year since its May 2013 proposal by Nutter, the levy would draw dollars from an estimated 280,000 Philadelphians who smoke.

The tax would generate about $45 million in the final six months of the School District's fiscal year if implemented by January, the mayor has said.

But with city smokers now asked to pay a premium for their nicotine break, would those projections - and citywide cigarette purchases - hold up? The answer on the street Tuesday remained fuzzy.

"Until we add these two dollars to the cost, we don't know what will happen," said Jesly manager Raul Medina, who had observed this much about his customers over the last three years: Even as prices remained high, cigarettes flew off the shelf.

"When the price rises, sales will fall," Medina predicted, speaking in Spanish. "But after a few months, sales will go back up."

He said some people might migrate to the suburbs to save $2. But in his neighborhood, "probably not a lot," Medina said.

Outside Philadelphia, news of the tax was welcomed by tobacco retailers, and several Montgomery County merchants predicted the tax could spell big business for them.

Employees at the Gulph Mills Sunoco on South Gulph Road in Wayne said the A-Plus mini-mart there was already a popular pit stop for smokers driving between New York and Pennsylvania.

The store sits near entrances to several thoroughfares, including the Schuylkill Expressway and the Blue Route, and motorists sometimes load up on as many as 10 cartons at once, said cashier T.J. Biddy.

With cigarette prices in Philadelphia about to leap, Biddy said he could only imagine how much more business they would get.

"Two dollars. That's a big difference," he said, laughing. "That's enough to make me quit smoking."

Part-owner Mike McLoughlin predicted that the higher cigarette prices would drive plenty of smokers to start buying outside the city limits.

"Just look at what you see in Delaware with liquor," he said, referring to the lower prices over the border. "When you start taxing people to death, they'll look for ways around it."