As cigarette taxes rise, smokers are increasingly logging on before lighting up--buying their smokes on the Internet, where they escape state and local taxes.

"They get enough out of me," said an Evanston free-lance writer who gave her name only as Sally and said she has purchased cigarettes online. "They tax the food, my property, my income.''

The state says smokers are liable for the taxes, but it's tough, officials admit, to make them pay.

This year, according to one study, sales of tobacco on the Internet will break $1 billion nationally. That figure is forecast to increase fivefold by 2005.

Starting July 1, a pack-a-day smoker in Illinois would pay $358 a year under the latest hike in state cigarette taxes--a $146 increase.

On the Web, smokers find vendors advertising not only cheap smokes--a carton of Marlboros can be had for $26.99, compared with $40 at stores in Cook County--but also sympathy. One Internet vendor site bills itself as "The Last Refuge of the Persecuted Smoker.'' On another, a customer posted a message that read: "Thanks from all of us 'Menaces of Society.' ''

About 3 percent of smokers now buy online, mostly from shops operated by American Indians on reservations. By 2005, online sales are forecast to hit 14 percent, according to the study by Forrester Research, a Massachusetts research firm that analyzes technology's effect on business.

Given that Illinois will raise about $700 million annually from cigarette taxes, the state could be missing out on millions in lost revenue from Internet sales.

Michael Klemens, a spokesman for the Illinois Revenue Department, said that under federal law, Internet vendors are required to provide states with the names and addresses of their customers. Since 1999, Illinois has been notifying vendors of this law and has collected about $89,000 from 2,300 Illinois smokers.

"Do we catch everybody?" Klemens said. "Absolutely not. There is a program in place, and with the next [tax] increase we'll have to see how much emphasis we'll put on this in the future."

The number of online cigarette stores has exploded in recent years, getting a boost every time states such as Illinois raise their cigarette taxes. Already this year, at least a half dozen states have hiked smoke taxes--New York's jumped to $1.50 a pack. Illinois' will be 98 cents after July 1.

More than 100 companies sell smokes on the Web, 67 percent of them from Indian reservations, which operate under "sovereign nation'' status and are not compelled to collect state sales or excise taxes, said Robert Rubin, who wrote the Forrester report.

Tobacco, he said, is "the perfect online replenishable: cheap to ship, nonimpulsive and a big money-saver given that taxes eat up 21 percent of a pack's price.''

Samantha Phillipe, president of the Smoker's Club, an association of smokers with a Web site that links to an Indian-run smoke shop, said state governments are unfairly balancing their budgets on the backs of smokers.

She likens smokers buying cigarettes on the Internet to the American colonists throwing tea into Boston Harbor in 1773 to protest a British tax on the commodity.

Darryl Jayson, vice president of the Tobacco Merchants Association, said while the number of people buying cigarettes on the Internet is growing, the lure of doing so has limits, given that cigarettes are sold on the Net only by the carton.

"Most sales are single pack,'' Jayson said.

The reason? "They think they could quit at any time,'' he said.