Pennsylvania’s tax on cigarettes will be raised starting Monday, and some Butler residents aren’t happy about it.

The tax will go from $1.60 to $2.60 per pack. This will cause the price of cigarettes to go up, a fact not lost on smokers.

“They are upset,” said Razi Deen, cashier at the Shell location at 501 W. Jefferson St. “They are saying, ‘We want to quit smoking, or we need some alternate. We can’t afford it.’”

According to Deen, some have even said, ‘We’re moving to West Virginia.’”

Deen said he isn’t in favor of the tax.

“If you put more tax (on cigarettes), definitely the business will go down,” he said.

He also spoke about how important cigarettes are to the customers.

“If people have three dollars, first they buy cigarettes, then lottery tickets, then food,” he said.

Deen said another issue is that “people can’t afford it.”

“I feel bad,” said Tony DiLulio, owner of Tony’s DiLulio’s Car Care Center in Zelienople. “There are people I know who would love to quit smoking, but they just can’t.”

DiLulio said the store sells about 50 packs of cigarettes a day.

“If they buy packs for 10 cents less somewhere else, they will go there. It’s pretty competitive,” he said. “They (customers) are going to get punished with another dollar on top of it.”

One of those people is Adrianne Dowling. Dowling and her husband, of Butler, switched to smoking filtered cigars because they can’t afford cigarettes.

“We keep trying to quit,” she said. “We’re not any time soon.”

Dowling offered insight on the tax increase.

“Smokers are the outcasts nowadays,” she said. “It’s an easy thing to tax and people who smoke aren’t going to quit.”

One Butler man, Dan Kopp, doesn’t mind the taxes, as long as the money is put to good use.

“It depends on what the tax dollars are used for, really,” Kopp said. “It’s not like you need (cigarettes) to live.

“As long as they’re used for something good, that’s good, even though I’m a smoker.”

Edward Light of Butler is a former smoker, and is not in favor of the tax increase. However, the cost of cigarettes is nothing new to him.

He quit smoking more than 15 years ago for the sake of his health, but also for another reason.

“The price back then was going up,” he said.

Still, he thinks other areas should be taxed.

“The million dollar homes, they’re the ones they got to tax,” he said.

Tina Perry of Butler is a smoker and said cigarettes are taxed too often.

“I just feel that when they tax anything it’s the cigarettes,” she said. “It isn’t a fair thing. They tax the heck out of it. That’s where they go, either gas or cigarettes, and it’s not fair.”