Local smokers aren’t happy about the higher cost to light up.

The price of a pack of cigarettes increased 50 cents a pack Friday as a result of a huge jump in the state’s cigarette tax.

“(Smokers) ask why that much,” said the manager of the Old Post General Store on Hwy. 11. “People say they want to quit (smoking) but it’s hard to quit.”

A pack of Marlboros now sells for $5 a pack, the manager said.

An employee of One Stop store on Cherokee Avenue said her customers don’t like the price increase.

“Some people are mad. They say a bad word.”

The new tax is a huge increase over the previous 7- cent tax that smokers in South Carolina paid and is higher than North Carolina’s 45-cents-a-pack and Georgia’s 37-centper pack tax.

Some customers tried to lessen the price hike by stocking up on cartoons of cigarettes before July 1, the day the new tax took effect.

“Three days before, we had people come buy cartoons,” an employee of the Highway 11 Food Mart said.

The tax is expected to generate $125 million over the next year. The revenue will be used to offset growing Medicaid costs, while $5 million will go to smoking prevention and cessation programs and another $5 million to the Medical University of South Carolina’s cancer center.