I just saw a fascinating gif map on Reddit showing the change of cigarette purchases from the 1970s to 2012. Given the decision by CVS to stop selling tobacco products, this is an interesting perspective on the social trend.
I thought that you might be interested so here is the link: Map
It is a hopeful sign though there is an interesting backslide recently. I continue to be surprised and disappointed in seeing young people smoke. My family in Chicago has a number of smokers, including among my nephews and nieces. It is particularly surprising given the extremely high price of packs today. That of course is the value of an addictive product.
The trend nationally is more promising than the results in my family. Traditional tobacco sales are down roughly 30 percent but E-cig sales are climbing by an impressive 25 percent annually.
A guide dog can vote. All dogs were put here on Earth by God on the 8th Day so as to guide humans. A guide dog is one who helps and guides a blind or half blind human. Since the advent of voting machines we guide dogs have been able to vote. I will not explain exactly how we do it. But on election day we wear dog tags which say: Vote Democrat– Early and Often.
My half blind guy is a poll worker at the voting poll. I help him. The voting machine has a handle at the top for straight party ticket voting. My state is considerate of midgets and the levers are down low. After the polls close one can hear the machine being operated by someone in there. I wont admit to nothing. One dog who works the polls is named Claire as in Claire Booth Loose. No pun intended.
As to smoking. Any young person who takes it up is dumb as dirt. If it was my kid I would give him a pistol and tell him to get it over with. If your own kid is a smoker it reflects on you. And if you are an adult and smoke in front of kids then you should reconsider your options. Move to Russia where it is taken for granted that humans are dumb as dirt.
BD, Bob Marley.
My HERO.
Kinda says somethin’ about you. Are you allowed to vote?
Ya know, at the constitutional adoption in 1789, a citizen had to be 21 years of age and own 50 acres or 50lbs. Sterling.
The inmates have taken over the asylum.
I recently saw a short film about a young gay professional who attends a party (orgy) specifically dedicated to unsafe sex. Afterward most people agreed it was sad to see someone engage in such self-destructive behavior. When I agreed and said what the man did with his sister in an early scene was especially disturbing, no one knew what I was talking about – because what that scene showed was them sharing a smoke.
It was a perfect example of how “hollywood” and actors in their private lives smoking to look hip continue to de-stigmatize smoking.
Gary and Darren, AMEN!
Liberaltarian, If you travel to NH is will all make sense. The image of many people outside New England is a bucolic state w/ plaid shirted men and women in sensible clothing. The reality, outside the few cities and college towns is poor white folk who like to drink heavily, smoke cigs, listen to country music, and race cars on back roads. I worked drilling and blasting in NH silica quarries one summer. Good, blue collar, folk. There are a lotta folks like that in Maine and also in Vt. and rural Massachusetts. The latter 2 states have been gentrified by NYers and Bostonians, marginalizing the natives.
I agree with Gary on the vaping issue. Many pols here are doing everything they can to wipe out the e-cigarette industry. Some are even saying it is bad because it does not have the taxation that smokes here do, and by extension one has to wonder what is more important to them; health or taxation.
The second camp in the opposition is the ignorant type. I don’t believe they have ever been involved with those who vape They see video in the news of people doing this outside where a large vapor cloud form due to atmospheric conditions and they conclude incorrectly that this causes fog like nastiness indoors. This group doesn’t even consider the fact that cigarettes are dangerous and that e-cigarettes could not be worse. Rather than waiting for definitive studies, these pols are convinced it is bad.
Then comes the “what about the children®” boogieman.
Nick,
I started smoking at 31, having never smoked before.
I was in a stressful situation, and the smoke braced and calmed me at the same time.
I never identified with the whole smoking experience, just the effect, which I never let recede into the background as just normal living. So it was always a “thing” for me, not just normal. Coffee I consider just normal.
When vaper Cigs came about I tried some of the early versions, but they didn’t quite cut it for me, too many kinks. A couple years later they got the kinks out mostly and it became practical. It has been four months now, and it satisfies and enhances similarly to cigarettes, so win win.
And to JBH PhD etc,
I think I will brave the risk of psychosis, and continue disagreeing with you – the word “smoke” is distinguishable from “vapor”. Methinks you depend too much on pop definitions when scientific ones are germane to the discussion.
Vapor does not consist of particulate matter, smoke does; although in common vernacular you will find the non-rigorous observation that a plume of steam is “smoke”, it is not.
Like carbon emissions, smoking was understood to be toxic long before the Surgeon General made it official. Even then, the government response was tepid at best. The tobacco industry was immensely powerful but no where near so powerful as the fossil fuel industry is today. The arguments were the same. You’d have a guy whose lungs were black as tar – like a hurricane that put a city under water – and then some so called expert right next to him saying, we lack solid proof.
With the main stream media more compliant with industry and Wall Street than ever before, our lying eyes on Main Street just aren’t enough.
I quit cold turkey but it was probably the 12th time I had quit before it took. I was up to 3 packs a day when I finally stopped. It took about 3 weeks before I was human enough to be civil to the rest of the world.
I think if the young people got to spend time first-hand with people who are going through the slow, debilitating, and agonizing death from cancers, they may have a change of heart. One thing I think the anti-cigarette marking should point out is the actual long period of time in decline and suffering before the inevitable painful and horrible death.
Back in 1962 I read the statement that the average two pack a day smoker lived 10 years less than a non-smoker. From a course in probability theory I had just taken I knew that result was statistically significant, so I quit cold turkey the next day. Too made that powerful impact on peoples’ lives can’t be appreciated by those unfortunate individuals who are smoking now.
By the first definition of the word, “vapor,” in the “college dictionary” that is close at hand for me, cigarette smoke is a vapor. Likewise, cigar smoke and pipe tobacco smoke.
I have been around people, alas, who were puffing away on so-called electronic cigarettes. Supposedly, the vapor from electronic cigarettes is made in part of nicotine, and that is also true for tobacco-based traditional cigarettes.
I have noted the effects of nicotine from the dispersed vapor(s), and have vacated the premises promptly, when people declined to stop drugging me with their vaped vapors.
If vapors were as harmless as the proponents of so-called electronic cigarettes (deceptively?) claim, then cigarette smoke, being a vapor, would be harmless.
Deception carries with it the enigma of being deceptive. If vapor means “harmless,” then no one has ever died in consequence of breathing the vapor of a raging house fire.
Merely stating that something is true does not confer actual truth onto what is stated.
JBH:
Smoke is not a vapor. It is solid particulate matter suspended in the air.
A vapor is a liquid that is dispersed in the air, either in fine condensate mist or in actual solution in the air.
The NYC law against vaping doesn’t reference whether the vaporizer has nicotine in it or not, it could be just water and still be prohibited.
Finally, even if it did have nicotine in it, the quantity that any second hand person would be exposed to approaches homeopathic levels.
And as we all know, homeopathy is always a good thing.
Why is NH such an outlier? They have by far and away the highest cigarette sales per capita in 1970 and third highest in 2012. They are double the rate for all other New England states at both the beginning and end of this time period.
GaryT, The nanny state hates vaporizers and it is not based in science, but hatred for tobacco. Ironically, tying in w/ the Indian thread, tobacco is a sacrament in the Indian culture. So, the paternalistic people who try and protect Indians FEEEELINGS hate their sacrament. I had a doctor in California tell me vaporization releases NO CARCINOGENS. The vaporization occurs prior to flash point. And the flash point is what releases the carcinogens.
Nick:
I agree there is no scientific basis for their antipathy to vaporizers.
And yet they feel they can still regulate the raw unharmful behavior of people in public areas because it LOOKS like a cigarette.
I don’t live in NYC now, but I believe that said regulation against pubic vaping in bars/restaurants is a first amendment violation that is actionable in federal court.
Their prohibition is self-admittedly based upon what the behavior looks like, not that is harmful in any way to others. This becomes a free expression issue.
If I wanted to suck water vapor from a bottle in public because I think it looks cool, and there is no public health issue involved, the only objection that the govt has is they think it doesn’t look cool, then I have a first amendment claim.
I would do it if it happened there, NYC has a lot of money to negotiate settlements with.
Smoking is one bad habit that I am glad I did not get trapped by. My mother has been on oxygen full time for about 4 or 5 years, partially due to a long period of smoking. She did quit in the 70’s, but that was after many years of smoking. I don’t think she would still be alive if she hadn’t quit when she did.
CVS is on the watch list for negative impact sales…. Because of this decision…. Hence severe financial hurt… Which will cause the stock to fall in valve which could trigger a shareholder lawsuit.
I have quit smoking cigarettes by vaping.
But I have no intention of stopping vaping, it provides a very similar nerve tonic effect to cigarettes, which the practical and enjoyable reason that I smoked cigs in the first place.
And yes I say practical because it assists in my creative tasks and efforts.
The big difference is that in my opinion vaping has virtually no systemic poisonous effects unlike cigarettes.
It is amazing to me that the nanny state, having tried so hard for all these years to get people to stop smoking, ostensibly for health reasons, now has a solution to the problem and yet still wants to sabotage that victory from the jaws of failure.
Sheer overcontrolling idiocy.
I too have hipster nieces who smoke. Hollywood feeds into that.
Bob Marley had a song back about 30 years ago. It was named Legalize Marijuana. The opening line was:
“The Surgeon General Warns: Cigarette smoking is dangerous.
Does that mean anything to you?
So, legalize mari juan a, oh oooh, oooh, oooh!
Right here in sweet Jamaica! ooooh, oooh, oooh!
etc.
My mother, back when I was in a human life, started smoking at age 12. So did her two sisters. They all three died as they each reached the age of 63. In order of their age. The first of heart disease, my mom of lung cancer, and the third one from emphysema. None of the death certificates listed smoking tobacco as the cause of death. They should have. At my mom’s bedside was a doctor once a day who could be seen smoking out in the hallway. The nurses smoked outside the ward but indoors. This was back in 1978.
Recenctly, I took my half blind guy to an emergency room at a hospital to visit a friend. There was one of those suicide buckets outside the entrance for smokers to throw their butts. Several nurses and two doctors were in attendance smoking away. I barked at the idiots as I went by.
Young people today have no excuse. The Bob Marley song is available and there is all sorts of literature out there explaining that tobacco kills.
My advice is that guns are quicker. With a firearm suicide you do not go through all the family money paying for cancer treatments. You do not die of your “Battle with cancer”, as some obits say it. No, the obit will say something in reference to a gunshot suicide like: “suddenly”. Not one person in America should commit suicide by smoking and then give out this rant about having a battle with cancer. It is self induced.
When you see a kid smoking tell him the above. And more. If it is one of your own kids then disown him or her if they don’t stop right away. We are tired of this dumb apCray approach to life and suicide. Guns are quicker. If your kids smokes, buy him or her a pistol. Make a point. Only tell them not to smoke around you and fowl your air and not to aim the gun at anyone other than self.
These are rough words but by Dog they are needed.
I see so many young people smoking today, and it is very troubling. Travel to nearby WV and it is quite remarkable. It would be an interesting to study to conduct a well written survey or interviews and see if there is a common thread.
Thanks, Jonathan. Sorry to hear about the smokers in your family. Have they tried vaping? It is the most effective and pleasureable way to quit smoking. I was able to quit in three weeks after smoking for decades and failing to stop by any other means.