The amount of milk I drink in a given day has a lot more variance than a smoker's amount of cigarettes smoked in a day.

Also, milk goes bad a lot faster. I'd buy a lot more of it to have as backups if it didn't.

I haven't smoked in years, but I've given away more cigarettes than cups of milk.

Milk is a bad example as you need to constantly turn it over due to shelf life anyway.

A better example would be running out of toilet paper.

I can't recall ever seeing my smoking friends have 2 packs of cigarettes or a backup pack at their house. Occasionally, someone will buy a carton on vacation. But I'm with you, if I smoked I would have a bunch of backup packs and probably buy them by the carton.

Buying cigs by the carton is stingy

Fixed

i don't know what "visceral" means but i used to work with a guy who smoked a pack a day and never bought cartons and i asked him why and he said it was because if you buy a carton you feel like a complete degenerate. by context clues i am assuming this was your point.

Not buying a carton as a regular smoker is like buying 1 pack of toilet paper at a time. Who does this? 24+ pack FTW.

That was his point. I don't always get cartons now, but I do occasionally because they are ~$15 cheaper in Missouri which is about 45 mins away. Even paying for gas (this gets split because I always buy for multiple people if I'm going) it's still pretty substantial savings, something like 2 to 3 packs free versus what I would get from spending the same amount on cigs here. OTOH, I have a tendency to smoke more. Like right now, I have 1 cig left .. if I had a carton, I'd burn it and open another pack. Since I don't want to go to the store, I'll save it for the morning. It's only one cigarette in this example, but I did find myself burning through an entire pack in like 8 hours while playing in a tourney a few weeks ago when I knew I had four more packs from the carton in my cupboard.

TC, it just comes down to whether you are more a degenerate smoker or more a degenerate stingy person.

I don't buy packs anymore since I started rolling, but the prospect of running out of cigarettes always makes me slightly anxious, which makes me smoke more, so I make sure I always have plenty of tobacco/cigarettes on hand.

In terms of stingyness, there are people out there who rarely buy cigarettes, either because they are cheap or because they are trying to quit. If they ask me, I will give them smokes a couple times, but since I make sure I always have cigarettes, there is never any need to reciprocate. If they continually ask, eventually I refuse. If they say they don't have cigarettes because they are quitting, I don't give them any on principle.

I would always purchase by the carton, but you don't bring a carton to a party with you...

When I smoked I had about a 2/3 pack per day when sober, and when drinking that went up to about a pack per evening. I would normally bring 2 and sometimes 3 packs with me to a party. Despite that, on rare occasions I still ran out due to all the people bumming smokes.

I always keep a carton in my vehicle and it always takes the clerk a second to process that I just asked them for a carton of cigarettes.

Think the fact that buying packs in advance is the type of long term planning that is not followed by people who partake in a sustained activity which will probably give them cancer.

^ Ya I don't buy cartons pretty much for all those reasons above.. I do sometimes buy a tin of tobacco and roll my own though, very cost effective and baller when the cops see you rolling something they automatically assume its weed but I get to get all defensive and start a scene because its just tobacco FTP (not full tilt poker btw)

Its pretty easy to agree now that its possible to run out of a pack and possibly bum a smoke (situation dependent) - so grow up all you old farts that treat smokes like gold