The thing is, he and his family presumably, at the moment, have no other money besides Our Money thanks to Obamanomics and the fact that it’s illegal for any business to hire him for less than $7.25 an hour, even if it’s just to scrub a few toilets. And soon enough, it’ll also be illegal for any business to hire him without giving him health insurance.
Maybe he’d been nursing his last pack of smokes for the past month, and this pack was going to be his last for the next two months? Who knows. What if he was trying to buy Nicorette with the cash assistance instead?
I myself had absolutely zero income in February 2009 - zilch, nada, zip - and while I was blessed with supportive family, decent credit, and some money in the bank and we scraped by without needing to resort to SNAP or TANF, I can’t help but think “there but for the grace of God go I,” and although I wouldn’t be buying smokes, since I don’t, I can’t help but wonder what other things I might want buy that someone, somewhere, would find offensive.