Rising costs are burning a hole in the pockets of smokers.

According to the latest Bermuda Digest of Statistics, the price of a carton of cigarettes has jumped by $63, in the past nine years. In 2013, a carton cost $80.75, and in 2022 it was $144.57.

“This is definitely having an impact on our customers,” said one retailer, who did not wish to be named.

He thought the change in the price of cigarettes was because of the Government increasing the tax in an effort to dissuade people from smoking.

Importers of finished cigarettes, pay 40 cents per cigarette in duty.

“People are now buying smaller quantities of cigarettes,” he said. “Where people used to buy a carton, they now they might buy four packs.”

A few of his customers only buy one or two cigarettes at a time.

Last July, Michael Heslop attributed the closure of his business, The Smoke Shop, to duty on loose-leaf tobacco growing by about 1,000 per cent over the past decade.

Cigarettes were far from the only thing affected. Sugar prices, for example, increased by 50 per cent, from 2013 to 2022, while the cost of margarine went up by 68 per cent.

“I feel like I am being squeezed from both ends,” said Sarah Burrows, founder of the Bermuda Fudge Company. “On one hand, the people want to be paid more to cope with the rising cost of living. On the other hand, I’m being squeezed from the top by things like the sugar tax.”

She is not a fan of the tax implemented in 2018 to bring down the high rate of chronic diseases on the island, such as diabetes.

“Show me the evidence that it is working,” she said. “Show me the data!”

She is now resigned to making a small profit on her fudge products.

“These days I am running the business more for my mental health, as long as I am not losing money,” she said. “I like to meet tourists, have a good laugh and talk about the island.”

However, healthy foods were also impacted by climbing prices. Frozen peas were up 91 per cent and corn niblets up 113 per cent.

Even just having a bologna sandwich is more expensive these days with the sticker on the meat up 35 per cent between 2013 and 2022. The foods with the biggest increases between 2021 and 2022 were stewing beef, up 21 per cent, potatoes up 23 per cent and apples up 24 per cent.

The report also included data on wages and labour. The monthly average of registered unemployment was 66 in 2013, but fell to five people in 2021 and ten in 2022.

Last July, the Labour Work Force Survey revealed Bermuda’s unemployment rate at the end of 2022 was back to pre-pandemic levels. In November of that year, the unemployment rate in Bermuda was 3.1 per cent, compared with 3.8 per cent in November 2019. The rate hit 7.9 per cent in November 2020.