Posted on 06/13/2017 6:52:09 PM PDT by Fhios
" ... The national smoking rate has fallen to historic lows, with just 15 percent of adults still smoking. But the socioeconomic gap has never been bigger. ..."
"... Among the nations less-educated people those with a high-school-equivalency diploma the smoking rate remains more than 40 percent ..."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Found under the drudge headline
Smoking rate 40% 'among the nation's less-educated people'...
WTF? Am I wrong?
Tobacco taxes discriminate against the poor. Eliminate them. They pay their own way by kicking off earlier than the rest of us. I’m 60. If I take up smoking it will take 20+ years to catch up with me. Besides, tobacco is the one pleasure they can afford(expensive vacations-not). Problem solved.
subtitle:
Smokers are stupid.
42.3 million people are on food stamps.
Statistically, they are going to be a higher percentage of smokers.
I’ve definitely noticed this, driving around the poorer areas of my neck of the woods.
I suppose maybe wealthier people smoke in their houses.
Nobody notices that the stats given indicate more educated people smoke as a percentage.
>>subtitle:
Smokers are stupid.<<
Smokers were stupid as children. Smoking is stupid and there is not a smoker alive who a) wishes they never started and b) does not want to quit.
They say quitting smoking is harder that quitting heroin. I never did heroin but I assure you quitting smoking is damn hard.
I have complete sympathy for those who have not been able to quit.
What I immediately thought, and what I see in life.
Historically, a huge improvement in governance followed the spread of tobacco use around the world.
Back then, it’s health defects didn’t matter since death came so early.
Would like to see tobacco required to be used by those 20 to 40...
Children of the 50’s through the 70’s probably had stupid parents who trained them to be stupid smokers.
YOU, son, are the one who is STUPID!
The old smoker's mafia that used to be here would viciously deny that assertion, just like they attack as a gang anyone that criticized smoking. You have been here long enough to remember them.
The decrease in smoking has been one of the most dramatic changes in our culture over the last 20-30 years.
My best observation has been my being on a college campus on a regular basis for 30 years. Twenty years ago I would say that 40-50% of the students were at least social smokers. Today, I doubt that number is even at 10%.
Those were different times, but man those were some nasty battles.
I would say, so what if they haven’t all gone down equally?
Never smoked cigs...killed my dad, but I do enjoy the once a week cigar.
You say...tobacco is a pleasure?! I say...the immediate gratification of the need to get a fix for an addiction which won’t last is what the smokers have got going on. Which won’t last...the fix not the addiction. The addiction will keep coming back over and over again. Thus the need for a fix over and over again. Addiction needing a fix. Not real pleasure. Being a junkie is not the same thing as seeking pleasure. Being a junkie is the weakness of being too stupid to find a method of finding freedom.
In Hawaii, I can tell you from years of carefully observing, that WELFARE RECIPIENTS ONLY smoke.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.