Joe and the Tobacco-stalk

Two methods for estimating and illustrating tobacco consumption in Maine

Source: Maine Revenue Services, 9/2000

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Notes:

In the story of Jack and the Beanstalk young Jack is convinced to trade his poor family’s only cow for three magic beans. His angry mother throws the beans out the window where upon they grow to an unimaginable height.

This slide depicts the unimaginable height to which one year’s consumption of cigarettes in Maine would reach if they were stacked end-to-end. In FY 2000 the Maine Revenue Services earned nearly $75 million from a 74 cent per pack excise tax. The table calculates the number of cigarettes and their length, finding that they would have reached more than half-way to the moon.

A parallel calculation reaches the same results based on the assumption that 20% of Mainers smoke one pack per day.

Maine Revenue Service data also indicate that household expenditures on tobacco approached $300 million in FY 2000.