“You smoke out of anxiety because you don’t have the food you need,”
Wow. Winner of the most ignorant statement ever! Cigarettes are an expensive habit. I’m not knocking it, I’m just stating the financial truth. If this person can spend $5/day on them, then he can buy food. His diet wouldn’t have much variety but he wouldn’t starve.
Five dollars also buys a lot of vegetable and fruit seeds. Grass clipping and newspaper mulch are free. Just sayin’.
I’m sure there are additional subsidies to be had for abusing mind-altering substances. Poor guy just has the wrong addiction from a progressive standpoint.
You can buy a lot of staples on a $6 a day smoking habit, this so called Journalist will garner no sympathy from me.
Eat your cigarettes, problem solved. So they are unable to logically make a choice eat or smoke. I guess this is another job for government at the tax payers cost
"Even as health insurance comes to the poor through the Affordable Care Act, smoking remains a problem: Smokers may be charged a premium of up to 50 percent..."
So, "Minorities & Poor Hit Hardest" raises its head once again. Yet, Obamacare of course solves nothing.
What a hardship to have to choose between food and ciggies.
The poor should get free cigs. Allow cigs to be purchased with EBT cards. Where are Rangel and Sharpton? They should be advocating for this.
No cigs for the middle class, though. If they smoke, they’re evil.
Translation: It is my fault that he makes bad decisions.
Bet they also spend money on lottery tickets?
Poor people in Africa or Haiti don’t smoke two packs of cigs a day. When they get that poor, then I might care.
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I’d like to know the nature of his disability too. My guess is there is some type of work he could do.
Yikes. Cigs in this area run around $7.00/pack. That’s a lot of rice, chicken and beans for one day.
We’ve got food stamps. Why not tobacco stamps?
Newports are expensive. He should save some money and roll his own. Bulk tobacco is cheap.
I get annoyed with the “second hand smoke” meme. Yes the smoke that comes out of their lungs could be considered 2nd hand but how about the smoke that comes off the burning end of the cig? That is pure 1st hand smoke and everyone around smokers is smoking it!
A quintessential liberal conundrum.
Smoking relieves stress, cigarettes raise revenue, cigarette advertising encourages the poor to smoke, many have to choose between smoking and eating, the poor spend a higher percentage of income on smoking, ...
A quintessential liberal conundrum — a good liberal can take either side and feel good about it.
Smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em. Don’t smoke because smoking is bad.
[Disclaimer: I smoked for 4 decades. I quit in January 2003. I have empathy for smokers, but smokers can quit — if they really want to.]
“If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
“You smoke out of anxiety because you don’t have the food you need,”
And I keep hitting myself on my head with a hammer because it feels so good when I stop.
It’s the chemical addiction altering his better judgement. I used to be a heavy smoker and drinker and I am speaking from experience. Just about any lame excuse worked to keep my addictions going.
Don’t cigarettes cost about 6 bucks a pack? What’s that? The World’s Smallest Violin.....
Obamacare should allow docs to write prescriptions for medicinal smokes.
Something is wrong with this picture.... I just can’t put my finger on it....