Single smokes sold, illegally, outside Iowa, too

IOWA CITY - Hey smokers, would you buy one cigarette, instead of an entire pack, if you could?

Apparently some of you would like to, but it's illegal in Iowa.

I came across an Iowa City retailer doing this. Click here for the story.

Iowa is not the only place this is occurring. Here's a story out of Michigan from last year. The Bay City Times reported that it found a couple of stores selling single cigarettes, and store owners and state authorities said it has gone on for years, on a wider scale, mostly under the table.

In Tennessee, the Attorney General's Office warned 23 retailers allegedly selling single cigarettes, according to the Associated Press.

As Dale Thede with the Iowa Department of Revenue told me, this isn't that big of a deal in Iowa. In fact, they've only had a couple of known occurrences in the past few years.

Technically, a business could be fined for selling cigarettes in anything but packs of 20 or more. But the department hasn't had to do that. Instead, they call up the business and tell them to stop, and that's worked fine, Thede said.

Most businesses that do it do so in response to customer demand and as a money maker, he said. They can charge more for a single cigarette than what a comparable number of smokes would cost in a pack, just like a 12-pack is a better deal per pop than buying a single drink.

The businesses generally don't know it's against the law, Thede said.

That was the case at the Den in Iowa City. And as soon as they learned Wednesday that it is illegal, they stopped selling single cigarettes.