Cigarette sales may not be what they once were; and cigarette taxes (as well as efforts to quit) may result in many smokers' "borrowing" cigarettes from others. Still, many people today do buy cigarettes (and buy them regularly). In fact, while cigarette smoking was once seen as glamorous and "cool", over the last several decades the habit has fallen from grace. Today, smoking has become primarily associated with elderly people who started as kids and never quit, low-income individuals, and teenagers.
Most agree that nobody should smoke, and most believe, too, that making it difficult for teenagers to get cigarettes may help (and probably has helped) reduce the number who get hooked on smoking at an early age.
So, removing teenagers from the equation, that leaves a smoking population primarily made up of elderly smokers and low-income smokers - all of whom buy cigarettes today. Of course, there are some wealthy and/or education individuals who smoke as well. They don't, however, make up the majority of smokers.
Why do people with little money spend their money on cigarettes? They do it because they have a nicotine addiction. Why don't they have the "self-discipline" to "just quit"? Based on what smokers I've known have said, they don't (can't) quit because many use smoking as a way of "keeping calm enough" to get through extremely stressful days. The person who began smoking as a teenager or young adult learned how effective nicotine can be, when it comes to feeling calmer and better. While some smokers may have gotten addicted to nicotine as young people, others would tell you that, even if they smoked as kids, they weren't necessarily addicted until they were a little older, had met up with some severe loss or stress, and was "up for trying anything" that may help them cope (without becoming intoxicated with alcohol, and without having their thinking clouded by drugs). Whether they're teenagers who experiment, or adults who have learned, first-hand, how much better smoking a cigarette can make a stressed out or grieving person feel, most smokers saw smoking as a short-term or occasional thing when they began smoking. Nicotine withdrawal is difficult for people who have the normal amount of stress, but under the average amount of stress or loss many former smokers have managed to get through the quitting process.
For people who live in extremely difficult circumstances, and for people who have had extreme loss or grief, there is an extra element to their addiction that goes beyond just the physical dependency on nicotine. Smokers who live under unrelenting and/or extreme stress will tell you that they use cigarettes as a way to keep from feeling as if they will lose their mind. They will tell you they use cigarettes as a way to keep anxiety low enough to be able to function. Many smokers are parents or people who have jobs, and it is a rare person who can go sack out on the couch for a week because they're feeling so anxious they can't function (or because - in the middle of so much difficulty - they have decided to go without smoking long enough to quit).
Whether smokers or not, anyone who has lived with abnormal amounts of stress, grief, or loss will tell you that it can be challenging to "tuck away" the unbearable thoughts or worries and keep going. People who live with unrelenting sadness and/or little hope of having a normal life or having the time to get over all the loss and sadness may find that smoking makes things a little more bearable. These can be people who have found that while smoking doesn't take away the difficulties and sadness, it makes bearing with those things possible. Nicotine can actually help a person feel as if he "has enough mental strength" to keep control of those unbearable, hard-to-control, thoughts and feelings that, if allowed to "run free" in his mind, would make functioning difficult and just existing almost unbearable.
People with only average stress and loss in their lives will tell you that nicotine withdrawal is very uncomfortable and makes a person very irritable. People who have come to rely on nicotine to help them cope with unbearable sadness and/or loss will tell you that 1) they cannot bear to open the "Pandora's Box" of unbearable thoughts/feelings that gets opened when they go without nicotine, and 2) that they have had so much discomfort in life they can feel as if they've reached a saturation point and cannot possibly ask for yet more by giving up nicotine.
Former smokers who merely began smoking young and kept smoking, but who have normal lives, may not understand the additional challenges for smokers who have not been so fortunate. Non-smokers certain can't understand. The fact is, that the world is full of elderly smokers, low-income smokers, and financially comfortable smokers who have "emotional baggage". For people who would never consider using drugs or alcohol as a way to deal with unbearable difficulties, smoking (and use of sugar or fatty foods) is a "more acceptable" alternative. Such people often reason that they will quit "one day" (when there isn't so much difficulty in their life), but life has a way of bringing the elderly, the low-income, and even those people with emotional baggage more and more issues to be dealt with. The good health and more carefree days of youth, money, and emotional health don't come easily to those who don't have them - and so "one day" never arrives for a lot of smokers.
Then, too, when smokers aren't using nicotine to help them cope with difficult circumstances they may smoke because they just enjoy it and can feel as if "it's the only thing they have".
Cigarettes - those much despised destroyers or lives - offer some smokers a calmer mind with which to think more clearly, and some version of "enjoyment" in a life that otherwise has little. Something that offers so much to someone who otherwise has little of what people with normal lives have can be hard to part with, even if nicotine withdrawal weren't an issue (which, of course, it is).
These are the people who buy cigarettes - the elderly smokers, those with lives that make quitting too unbearable, and those with emotional baggage. As is the case with all addicts, smokers like these feel as if they cannot live without smoking. What many people don't realize is that, at least for some, there can be some truth in their belief. Smokers often decide to sacrifice their physical health in favor of their mental health. After all, many are parents and people with jobs and have to keep functioning.
These days it appears that law-makers and much of the public in general believe that taxing cigarettes, a legal product among other legal products that aren't particularly healthy for us, is a way to reduce smokers and pull in some extra revenue. Few other products are so freely and proudly taxed by legislators who appear to have jumped on the bandwagon of the public's distaste for, and hatred of, smoking.
Elderly smokers, people who live in unrelenting sadness, and those with emotional baggage will pay the price for cigarettes. Many may still believe that cigarettes are a better alternative to medications (legal or otherwise) and alcohol or to not being able to function. These are the people who will, and do, buy cigarettes.