Those of you who gave cigarettes up for Lent are about to save a lot of money.

At a time when most don’t have a lot of money to spare, smoking will soon be a much more expensive habit.

On April 1, a federal excise tax on cigarettes will increase from the current 39 cents per pack to $1.01 per pack. That’s an increase of almost 200 percent — and that comes after cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris raised prices by 90 cents a pack.

According to a local gas station manager, those increases mean a carton of cigarettes will soon cost about $10 more.

Nobody has that money to spend, so take this opportunity to put those cigarettes out for good.

To that end, we applaud Family Connection’s anti-smoking campaign in Vincent.

The campaign, aided by prominent posters across town, is designed to attract notice, and a serious issue such as teen smoking deserves to be talked about.

Education is the only answer to stop kids from smoking, and Family Connection is doing its part to make sure kids have all the answers they need — including the knowledge that 174,000 of today’s youth will die a smoking-related death.

Maybe when Family Connection designs its next poster to go across town, it should consider using “$6.29.” Come April 1, that’s how much it’ll cost per pack for smokers to slowly kill themselves.