Cigarette Brand Guides & Buying Notes
Brand notes, buying guides and dispatch updates. Written for people who already know what they smoke and want the detail a product page cannot carry — how a format differs from its neighbour, what actually changes between two tar ratings, and what to expect when a carton arrives.
- All 96
- Brand Comparisons 11
- Buying Guides 31
- Japanese & Korean Cigarettes 15
- Menthol Cigarettes 12
- Prices & Duty Free 21
- Smoking Culture 6
Is Marlboro Gold the Same as Marlboro Lights?
Yes — Gold is Marlboro Lights. The product was renamed, not reformulated, when US law prohibited "light" and "mild" as descriptors on cigarette packaging. Why the na…
Are Marlboro Reds Strong?
Yes, relatively. Marlboro Red is a full-flavour cigarette and it sits at the strong end of the mainstream American range — but it is not the strongest cigarette avai…
Korean Cigarette Brands: What Exists
Korea's cigarette market is unusually concentrated: one manufacturer, KT&G, accounts for the large majority of domestic volume. That produces a brand landscape with…
Mevius is the most internationally available Japanese brand and the volume leader at home. Whether it is good depends on what you want from a cigarette, and the hone…
How Much Do Cigarettes Cost in Korea?
Korea is one of the cheaper developed markets for cigarettes, and the pricing structure is unusually simple: a single national price band rather than the state-by-st…
What a Carton Costs, and What Drives It
Two smokers in different states can pay a 60% different price for an identical carton, and neither is being overcharged. The difference is structural. The layers, in…
How Much Are Cigarettes by the Carton?
The short answer is a range, and the range is wider than for almost any other consumer product. A carton of the same mainstream brand costs about $48 in the cheapest…
Carton of Cigarettes Price: What Sets It
Carton pricing is the clearest illustration of how cigarette tax works, because multiplying by ten makes every layer visible. A pack price hides the tax; a carton pr…
How Old Do You Have to Be to Buy Cigarettes?
Twenty-one, everywhere in the United States. There is no state where 18 is still the legal purchase age for cigarettes, and there has not been since December 2019. T…
Buying a Carton Online: Unit, Price and Format
A carton listing looks simple and frequently is not. Unit counts vary, formats are ambiguous, and the price can include or exclude things that change the real cost.…
Buying Japanese Cigarettes Online: What to Expect
Japanese cigarettes have a devoted following outside Japan and a supply problem: the brands are only partly exported, the versions sold abroad often differ from the…
Can You Buy Cigarettes at 18?
No — not in the United States. The federal minimum age to purchase tobacco products, including cigarettes, is 21, and it has been since December 2019. What changed i…