JOAT A highbrow is a person educated beyond his intelligence.
- Brander Matthews
Could be, has a lock....
Taking it at their word that it is for tobacco.....
It is not the curing of tobacco that is the problem, it is the taxes on the pack of cigarettes.
Back about 50 years ago, I remember my Dad and Uncle having a flimsy metal device sold by Bugle Boy Tobacco company that rolled cigarettes some what close to un-filtered cigarettes. Bugle Boy sold tins of loose tobacco, which did not have the "cigarette" tax. The user loaded up the tobacco, placed a cigarette paper on the top and rotated the handle, and out popped an un-filtered cigarette.
There was a elliptical form in the center about 4 to 5 inches side to side and slightly deeper than a cigarette, a thin leather belt over the top, and a lever hinged to the center, and it would swing side to side in a circular arc under the leather belt. The lever had a dowel running front to back under the belt. With the lever to one side, the elliptical shape of the molding form and slack in the belt allowed the user to load up tobacco (on the belt) between the dowel and the form. As the handle is rotated the tobacco becomes tighter, and rounded in shape due to elliptical shape of form and the circular path of the dowel. At the highest point in the path of the lever, and the top of the form, a cigarette paper is placed on the belt to get rolled up around the tobacco. With practice, a tight packed cigarette which allowed a slower burn could be made.
Yes, I know I cannot describe it clearly in a text only format NG, and I am working from just memory, but maybe you can get an idea of what I am talking about.
Now, if someone were to come up with a woodworking design for a cigarette roller.
- Pipe tobacco I think can be shipped across state lines.
- In my state, I think the law is you cannot sell cigarettes without paying the taxes. You can roll your own legally.
- I keep hearing the rumor that the material to make cigarettes and cost of manufacturing, transportation, and retail store profit is less than 40 or 50 cents.
- The rest is taxes. Sin Taxes.
Just to stir the kettle.
Phil
Don't know if it's that low but close. They will keep taxing it until their tax base dries up and it starts costing the tax payers money. When taxes get high enough on it, there will be large scale tobacco smuggling. The majority will be buying illegal tobacco thus not paying taxes. Law enforcement will spent time trying to catch tobacco smugglers. That will cost money. The huge amount of revenue generated now from tobacco taxes will have to be made up for somehow so other taxes will go up. Any time I run into one of these anti tobacco zealots, I ask him how much he is willing to pay to get people to quit smoking. Few have thought this through.
They were still around 20 years ago or so. I had one, but used pipe tobacco (string cut) instead of the BB cigarette tobacco.
Tobacco is the only thing I can thing of that a person would want to throw in a drying kiln, and then only if it was going to be used for cigarettes. Most forms of tobacco are still moist when consumed. The only other types of plant matter that a person might want to dry are cooking herbs.
Those are still around at any given tobacco shop. I haven't smoked in a couple of years, but I used to roll my own when I did. Zig-zag and Drum make rollers that are a piece of clear plastic with two bends in it, with two plastic rollers. There is a small (perhaps vinyl?) mat that goes over the two rollers that you use to roll the smoke. To operate the little gadget, you put the tobacco in between the rollers on the mat and give it a spin with your finger tips, then place the ungummed side of the paper between the rollers, dampen the gum, and roll it up. Easiest thing there is. There are a bunch of loose tobacco brands that are still around- my favorite was American Spirit, but Drum, Bugle Boy, Velvet, Top, Borkum Riff and Caloise are all over the place. You only pay the tax for one pack of tobacco for an entire can, so a carton and a half of hand-rolled cigarettes (used to, who knows what it is now) came out to about $11- and that was for the premium stuff in the metal cans. The crap like Top and Velvet was only a couple of bucks.
They also make machines at that work on the same principle, but use empty cigarette paper tubes with fiters pre-attached that are pulled over the rolled tobacco.
Not worth the effort, really. The plastic ones only cost a couple of bucks. While it might be kind of neat to make your own, the problem with all of them is that the rolling mat has a tendancy to split in the middle of the seam after a while, so it really kind of makes more sense to simply have a disposable one.
Any tobacco can be shipped across state lines. I knew some folks who used to buy American Spirit in 50lb. bales and keep it in thier chest freezer. It was shipped from Arizona to Wisconsin and not a single eyebrow was raised. You can also order most tobacco products online, including the really hard-to-find stuff like hard snuff (spit-less chewing tobacco that tastes and smells like breath mints) as well as cigarettes and cigars. Camel also used to ship entire free cartons to people on their mailing lists when they introduced new products.
FWIW, don't roll pipe tobacco into cigarettes and expect a good result. It is way too moist, and has a rather high sulfur content. The only stuff that works when it's rolled is Borkum Riff.
I doubt you can resell any of it anywhere in the US without a proper license. Buying it is a whole different thing, though.
Yep. And this is the country that fought the British over a minor tax on tea. But what are you going to do about it?
I don't know if you succeeded or not, but I'd figure I'd fill in the details for any of the smokers on the list. I don't smoke anymore because my wife had to quit (asthma), but I still think that the taxes the health nuts put on it are criminal. Rolling your own really is the way to go if a guy wants to save money. Some of the hand-rolleds are additive free as well- which doesn't make them good for you, but it may well make them less bad for you.
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