There was a time when people did not think twice about smoking. That was when a pack of cigarettes could be bought for pocket change, when it was still legal to smoke in bars and restaurants, when Philip Morris — the nation’s largest tobacco company —still had its headquarters in the Philip Morris building.

Of course, things have changed. After all, the Philip Morris building is not even called that anymore. (When it was new, in the early 1980s, it was called the Philip Morris Research Center and Headquarters, at first. Philip Morris’s parent company, the Altria Group, moved its headquarters to Richmond, Va., two years ago.)

On the sidewalk alongside that building, at 120 Park Avenue, across from Grand Central Terminal, is an oasis for smokers in an increasingly smoke-free city: two thigh-high ashtrays and room to stand for the few minutes between lighting up and stubbing out. Smokers know this place well: Some come from as far as a block and a half away, because they dare not light up outside their own office buildings.

It is between a subway entrance and, of all things, a tobacco shop. And it is not a happy place. The latest sin tax, part of an emergency budget measure to keep the state government running, will add $1.60 in state taxes to a pack of cigarettes. In New York City, where cigarettes are also subject to municipal taxes, the price of a pack of some brands will jump to more than $11 — or more than 50 cents per cigarette.

Smokers came and went in this open-air smoking lounge, but the anger against the new tax — and sense that smokers are being picked on in budget-conscious times — remained.

  “I’m definitely not happy about it,” John O’Gorman, a risk manager who was smoking a Marlboro Light that now is called Marlboro Gold, said of the new cigarette tax, which takes effect on July 1. “There have got to be easier ways to raise more money.”

All right, Mr. O’Gorman: Pretend that you were a governor facing a big budget shortfall. What would you tax to raise additional revenue?

“All the cars coming into Manhattan,” because they contribute to air pollution, Mr. O’Gorman said. “Maybe there’s a way to tax that.”

Among a cross section of smokers the consensus was that the new tax was an economic penalty. How much of a penalty depended on each smoker’s own story, on how cost-conscious they had become in a recession, on whether they had jobs or had lost them. Some said that paying an extra $1.60 a pack would make cigarettes cost so much that they would get serious about quitting once and for all.

Doreen Campo, on a smoke break on Madison Avenue between 40th and 41st Streets, said her mother had died of lung cancer after smoking for years. Ms. Campo, 51, said she had continued to smoke, but the new tax could change that.

“I won’t be able to afford to smoke,” she said, smoking a Marlboro Cigarettes. “It’s too expensive. It’s expensive now. You end up short. You end up not eating because you want those cigarettes.”

Still, she said, picking on smokers for new and higher taxes amounted to economic discrimination. “I mean, everybody has a right to do what they want to do,” she said. “It ruined the business for the bars because no one wants to go out in the cold to have a cigarette, or if you’re having a conversation, instead of you and me having a conversation, we have to get up and excuse ourselves and go outside. Even the restaurants. First they have smoking sections. Then they have none. Then you have the annoying people that pass by and they go like this.”

She waved her arms as if she were clearing smoke from a fire.

Daniel Conard, a sales manager smoking outside the former Philip Morris building, said the price still had a way to go before he decided that smoking was unaffordable. How high would the price per pack have to go? “For myself,” he said, “it would be $15.”

But New York is not getting much revenue from him, even now. “I’m from Kentucky,” he said. “I go home and buy a few cartons.” And not that often: “I’m a work smoker,” he said. “I don’t smoke at home.” He said he smoked two or three cigarettes a day.

He mentioned a tax on soda, an idea that Gov. David A. Paterson floated earlier in the year. “Smoking’s not good,” he said. “Drinking soda’s not good for the well-being of society, I guess. Still, I smoke. My great aunt smoked all her life and lived to 105 years. Some people do that.”