I seem to have a unique talent for obsessing endlessly over minor, mundane differences in pretty boring things. That said: let’s talk about tobacco in the UK and US! At length!

As a person with absolutely no respect for their physical wellbeing, I take great pleasure in blowing large amounts of hard-earned money on smoking. No biggy. Slightly more surprising to American people is that I roll my own cigarettes. I have done for most of my smoking life (which began when I was 18), primarily because of the cost.

In the UK, a pack of 20 cigarettes will set you back a little over £5. I can buy a pouch of tobacco, some rolling papers, and filter tips that will make up at least that many — around 30, before I run out of tobacco — for about £3. That’s a considerable saving on a fairly expensive habit. More than worth the extra hassle of having to roll the damn things whenever I want one, and in practise, that usually means I smoke less, something to do with having to make a conscious decision to make a cigarette before I can smoke it.

As far as I can tell, the savings aren’t quite as pronounced here in the US. Pack of 20 in the UK: £5. Pack of 20 in the US? $5. Huge difference there. (These are anecdotal observations, of course, I’m sure the exact prices vary a little from place to place.) It doesn’t seem to be just a matter of price, though; tobacco is also taxed a lot more heavily in the UK.

According to The Tobacco Manafacturers’ Association, the average price of a pack of 20 in the UK as of April 2009 is £5.85. Most of that is tax: £4.45 of it. The tax in the US is a mere $1.01 per pack. Which, courtesy of Barack Obama, is 61.6 cents more per pack than it was a year ago.

As far as tobacco goes, the cost of the materials to make your own seems to be fairly equivalent to the cost of just buying cigarettes, so it’s not quite as cost effective (though it does work out slightly cheaper, and usually tastes a lot better).

That said, although Americans find cigarettes and tobacco ridiculously expensive, it’s hard for me not to feel like I’m not getting a huge bargain.

There are a couple of other miscellaneous things I’ve noticed with tobacco in the US.

One: the quantities differ. In the UK, when you buy tobacco, you choose between a 12.5g, 25g, or 50g pouch. In the US, your options appear to be 40g pouch or Big Ass Tub O’ Tobacco — I think it was about half a kilogram, but I don’t recall — I only bought one once, because that’s a ridiculous amount of tobacco to buy.

It’s also a lot harder to find loose tobacco here. In Indianapolis, there’s one specialty tobacco supplier, and the odd gas station (Brits: that’s a petrol station) where you can find it. In the UK, every single general store, supermarket and gas station sells it; if they sell cigarettes, they sell tobacco.

There are some interesting regulatory differences, too. It’s illegal to advertise cigarettes in most mediums in both the US and the UK, and both countries require that manafacturers put health warnings on them, but the UK takes that a lot more seriously.

On the left here is a British tobacco pouch. On the right is an American one. (The differences are exactly the same on cigarette packets, too.) Right off, there’s an obvious difference in approaches, but this Wikipedia goes into more detail. To wit:

Anywhere in the EU, there must be at least two health warnings. One must cover 30% of the surface of the pack, and the other must cover 40%. There must also be a picture warning. Some of the pictures get a little graphic. (Though Brazil has us beat on graphic images.)

The US is a lot more lax about it, having one of the least prominent health warnings of all countries.

Warnings are usually in small typeface placed along one of the sides of the cigarette packs with colors and fonts that closely resemble the rest of the package, so the warnings essentially are integrated and do not stand out with the rest of the cigarette package.

Though that is soon to change, with new regulations requiring 50% of the front and back to have warning labels and capital letters.

I’d like to know more about how the US approaches trying to make people quit. It’s already pretty obvious that Brits get way more anti-smoking propaganda than Americans, but that’s a topic for another day. I need a cigarette.