DAMN! EVEN THE PRICE OF LOOSIES WENT UP!

There's no such thing as a cheap smoke anymore - even if you're willing to bend the law.
A pack of bootleg butts is up a buck and the cost of "loosies" up a quarter as the price of illegal cigarettes reflects the trickle-down effects of a new state tax.

"I remember when loosies cost a dime," said an angry Ron Kennedy, 52, lighting a 75-cent cigarette outside a Harlem bodega. "I'm going cold turkey."

Outside the Port Authority, bootleg cigarettes are selling for $9 a pack - up $1 since Gov. Paterson's new $1.60 tax hike kicked in Thursday.

At city grocery stores and bodegas, the price of a single cigarette jumped from 50 cents to 75 cents - leading some to wonder if tobacco sales are going up in smoke.

"Nobody is going to buy cigarettes anymore," complained Nasir Ess, 49, owner of the MBA Deli Grocery on E. 125th St. "You can buy crack for $10."

If Ess feared losing his illegal customers, the new tax was a boon to crooked cigarette hawkers who work the streets of Midtown.

With legal cigarettes now at $13 a pack and higher, the illegal peddlers decided to bump up their prices, too.

About 30 salespeople work the neighborhood between Penn Station and the bus terminal.

"I'm not robbing anybody," said a man selling Newports imported from Tennessee to W. 42nd St. "I'm not stealing."

Demand is already up for bootleg tobacco. One Times Square vendor said he was typically "sold out before the sun goes down."

And a Daily News reporter had little trouble finding an illegal vendor to buy a pack.

The latest increase put the tax on a pack of cigarettes at a tough-to-inhale $6.85 a pop.

"Why is Gov. Paterson doing this?" wondered Kareak Gadson, 44, taking a hard drag off his loosie. "Yeah, it's illegal. But who can afford packs, especially now?

"Who can quit?" he continued. "Loosies are like food."

Purnell Moody, 46, said buying single cigarettes was the only way he could afford to smoke. The price increase on loosies - he smokes about eight a day - was making him cut back. "I've got my nicotine patches ready at home," the tour guide said. "But look - when I get off the subway, I'm still going to buy two loosies for the walk home."