The Chicago Tribune write about the practice of purchasing “loosies”, or cigarettes purchased one at a time instead of the entire pack.

Gregory Laurence walked into a West Side gas station last month with a handful of change and what’s become a routine request in some parts of the city. Offering a dollar’s worth of quarters, nickels and dimes, Laurence asked for “two Newports.” Fellow smokers lined up behind to make the same transaction: A couple of smokes for a dollar, or one for 65 cents.

For many, this exchange wouldn’t sound like a good deal, especially when a pack of 20 cigarettes hovers around $7. But in some of Chicago’s most impoverished neighborhoods, the practice of buying individual cigarettes — known as “loosies” or “loose squares” — has long been a way of life.

 A Colombia University study found that individuals also purchased individual cigarettes from “$5 man,” which is “the commonly used term for a highly visible network of bootleggers who appeared after the tax increase”.

According to the study, most smokers admitted buying cigarettes from the $5 man throughout the community on street corners, in busy shopping areas, outside subway entrances, and in apartment buildings. Other accessible sources of reduced-price cigarettes, respondents noted, included “loosies” — single, out-of-package cigarettes sold illegally at local grocery stores or bodegas. Buying cigarettes out of state was another price-minimizing strategy.

Cigarette Smuggling is a $27.5 billion market worldwide.