A carton/week for 30 years, I finally quit cold turkey in 2015, --the year that more Americans quit smoking than ever before.
Americans are dropping the habit of cigarettes at record paces. Look around. You hardly ever see people smoking in public anymore. It wasn't long ago that you could always find a few people puffing away outside restaurants and storefront entrances. These days I rarely see this.
The decades-long campaign to ostracize smokers has worked. I'd imagine the rate of smoking among college-educated professionals is practically zero. Today, smoking is almost entirely a habit relegated to the poor and blue collar working class. And these are the people shouldering the burden of the $13 pack of cigarettes needed to fund the various programs that have come to depend on tobacco taxes.
In that same year, 2015, over 50,000 people died from drug overdose. Heroin has been getting cheaper and easier to obtain.
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The decades-long campaign to ostracize smokers has worked. I’d imagine the rate of smoking among college-educated professionals is practically zero. Today, smoking is almost entirely a habit relegated to the poor and blue collar working class. And these are the people shouldering the burden of the $13 pack of cigarettes needed to fund the various programs that have come to depend on tobacco taxes.
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And whom will be the next group to pariah?? Govt can *never* go w/o its ‘take’ (though having done NOTHING, but put hurdles\regs\red-tape in those that DO...but always 1st w/ their hand out for ‘their cut’), just think of the CHILDREN when the school funds go to $0. Whom will be filling the coffers? Junk food? Soda? Non-organic?
As another had noted, the mafia, or others willing to take the risk, will fill the niche of need.
Guess being a sanctuary city for the criminal invaders, they’ll have the ‘extra’ police.