Ridiculously Awesome - Lonnie Loosie

South Bend, Indiana is my home town. I haunted the west side and one of the things I particularly enjoyed was hitting up a gas station or store and buying a loosie aka a single cigarette. When I moved to Bloomington in 2004 I was disappointed to find that there was not a place to purchase a loosie.

I was opining this fact to a friend who worked at a gas station when he yelled "Theresa, that is illegal!" Oh....never would've known that on the west side of South Bend. I hope gas stations there still sell them. Or at least the Munchie Mart.

So, imagine the pleasant surprise I received when I found a New York Times article (Click Here) about a man named Lonnie Loosie, who stands on the streets of New York City and sells single cigarettes. He sells as many as 2,000 cigarettes a day.

“The tax went up, and we started selling 10 times as much,” Mr. Warner said. “Bloomberg thinks he’s stopping people from smoking. He’s just turning them onto loosies.”

Nice.


I know smoking is bad for you. And I know that no one should do it. But the truth of the matter is that in a lot of states (save maybe VA) when revenue is needed, cigarette taxes are hiked. The per pack tax in NYC went up $1.60 last July. That is brutal. Are they increasing taxes on alcohol that rapidly? How about taxing pop and processed foods that make people fat? They aren't or at least not in the same way they are always coming for the ciggies.

Lonnie Loosie is making enough money selling his single cigarettes he may be able to buy health insurance soon.