1.   Smokers often pay a high price in terms of their health.

2.   Addicted smokers will simply pay higher prices mainly to Philip Morris and RJR Nabisco.

3.   Cigarettes cost almost nothing to produce and are so addictive that smokers will pay whatever is demanded.

4.   Not everyone may care that smokers are paying more, but the point is that the tobacco companies simply shifted the burden of the settlement to their customers.

5.   People wait in line for hours to buy cigarettes, while impatient or desperate smokers pay double or triple prices on the black market.

6.   Yet smokers are paying less than they would have under that scenario, Nakamura adds, so the calculation makes no sense.

7.   Smokers already are paying the price of the mammoth tobacco settlement with the states.

8.   The price paid by smokers will vary, however, depending on excise taxes and retail markups.

9.   Under a proposed law thought to be the first of its kind in the nation, smokers would pay a surcharge for every cigarette pack they buy in Maine.