Ryan ChodoraStaff Writer

DeKalb | Rolling cigarettes with pipe tobacco is a cheaper alterna-tive than buying retail cigarettes.

The average pack of cigarettes costs $6.94 with taxes in Illinois, while rolling cigarettes may cost as low as $1.20 a pack. This sub-stitute way of attaining cigarettes can potentially save a smoker hun-dreds of dollars every year.

Rolling cigarettes involves a rolling machine, whether hand-held or electric. Cigarette rolling machines can cost anywhere from $10 to $200.

Premade cigarette tubes are available; these tubes range in siz-es, colors and lights, and include filtered tips. The cost for a box of 200 tubes is about $3. The tubes are made to be indistinguishable from a retail cigarette. A small por-tion of tobacco is packed into a fill slot on the machine, and depend-ing on each machine, there will be either a crank or a lever that will compress the tobacco and slide it into the empty tube. The entire process of rolling a cigarette takes seconds and rolling an entire pack of cigarettes takes minutes.

“Pipe tobacco is kind of like a safe haven for people who want to roll their own cigarettes,” said Tom Allen, president of Smoke 4 Less, 2900 DeKalb Ave., Unit B, in Sycamore. Smoke 4 Less is a new shop that allows patrons to pur-chase bulk tobacco and roll ciga-rettes.

Illinois state taxes on pipe to-bacco is $2.83 a pound, while an average price for a pound of pipe tobacco will cost about $18, and a pound of pipe tobacco can make about 400 cigarettes, according to Sue Mustafa, owner of Smoker’s World, 818 W. Lincoln Highway.

“They say it’s pipe tobacco, but it’s really used for cigarettes,” Mustafa said. “This way the tax gets lowered when they call it pipe tobacco.”

Pipe tobacco comes in several different flavors including men-thol, light, full flavor and regular. Mustafa said smokers often prefer the taste of pipe tobacco to its cig-arette counterpart.

Smokers in Illinois face high-er tax burdens than most other

states as well, with Chicago hav-ing the second highest price per pack average in the country—$5.66 a pack—second only to New York City at $5.85 a pack, accord-ing to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. The $3 Cook County tax on a pack of cigarettes is the sec-ond highest single tax placed on cigarettes in the country, high-er than the federal tax tax on

cigarettes, $1.01 a pack, and sec-ond to the New York State tax, $4.35 a pack.

“Cigarettes [prices] have gone up double in my lifetime; it’s in-sane,” said Greg Lawson, co-own-er of Shadowlands, 1027 W. Hill-crest Drive.

A pack of cigarettes in Chica-go has $6.67 attached to the price in city, county, state and federal

taxes. According to the 28th edi-tion of the Illinois Tax Handbook for Legislators, Illinois received $560.8 million in cigarette tax rev-enue in 2011.

“I think they are raising the price of cigarettes to discourage smoking,” said senior psycholo-gy major Mark Zarnecki. “But ulti-mately, it’s the smoker’s choice to smoke.”

Robert BairdStaff Writer

DeKalb | Lifetime earnings accumulated by NIU graduates outweigh tuition costs, accord-ing to 2012 survey results at PayScale.com.

PayScale.com has a Return on Investment Package ranking system that measures “what you pay to attend versus what you get back in lifetime earnings.”

Of the twelve public, four-year universities

in Illinois, NIU is ranked third. The Univer-sity of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (overall national rank No. 50) and the University of Il-linois at Chicago (overall national rank 370) were the only two schools ranked higher than NIU (overall national rank 401).

“We certainly are really proud to be in the top third in the nation,” said Cindy Hender-son, executive director of Career Services at NIU, according to NIU Today. “To rank so high

in the State of Illinois, where most of our stu-dents come from and then work after gradu-ation, certainly meets the expectation that they and their families have for when they leave NIU with a degree.”

More than 850 U.S. colleges (for both in- and out-of-state tuition when applicable) were ranked in 2012 by PayScale.com.

Cigarette taxes strain budgets for students

The Truth Must Bear All Light H Since 1899 www.NorthernStar.info H FreeTuesday, January 22, 2013

See PayScale | Page 3

“Cigarettes [prices] have gone up double in my life-time; it’s insane.”

Greg Lawson Co-owner of Shadowlands

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SceneAn NIU alumnus returned to the School of Music to play for students. Read more on Page 6.

PerspectiveColumnists Holly New and Danny Cozzi debate Roe v. Wade on its 40th anniversary. Page 8.

SportsGymnastics came out on top in a meet over the weekend. To read the full story, go to Page 10.

The Northern Star is the daily campus newspaper serving Northern Illinois University and the surrounding community.

Volume 113, Issue 64

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Bryce McMullin | Northern Star Photo IllustrationA person smokes a cigarette outside of University Plaza on Monday night.