<p>I guess that kind of throws a wrench into the whole idea that smoking makes you appear “wealthy, cool, and sophisticated”, huh? Looks like in reality, the complete opposite is true.</p>
<p>Very interesting article. Thanks for providing a link. As far as I’m concerned, the cigarette tax can go up sky high, and that may help the poor by forcing them to give up cigarettes, and therefore improve their health and have more money to spend on more productive things.</p>
<p>"Congress probably will revisit the cigarette tax issue soon because President Bush has pledged to veto the proposed $35 billion expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. The decade-old program helps families buy medical coverage if their income is too high to qualify for Medicaid.</p>
<p>Bush has proposed a more modest growth for the program, and both political parties seem inclined to pay for it through a tax on an unpopular group, cigarette smokers.</p>
<p>By most measures, the average smoker is less privileged than the average nonsmoker. Nearly one-third of all U.S. adults living in poverty are smokers, compared with 23.5 percent of those above the poverty level, according to government statistics.</p>
<p>The American Heart Association reports that 35 percent of people with no more than 11 years of schooling are smokers. Those with 16 or more years of formal education smoke at a 12 percent rate.</p>
<p>Non-Hispanic black men smoke at slightly higher rates than do non-Hispanic white men. But the reverse is true among women."</p>
<p>Well being from Michigan, the state shut down this morning, only for a few hours though. BUT the sale of cigarettes and alcohol ceased. I wish the shut down would’ve lasted longer so that people can get over their addictions.</p>
<p>More on smoking from Reuters:
"CHICAGO - Teenagers who feel relaxed after their first drags on a cigarette are most likely to become addicted to smoking, a sign that some people’s brains are more susceptible to nicotine, researchers said on Monday.</p>
<p>“We know that nicotine can have an immediate impact on the brain, and yet we also know that not every adolescent who tries a cigarette gets hooked,” said researcher Dr. Joseph DiFranza of the University of Massachusetts Medical School.</p>
<p>While peer pressure and other factors may lead young people to try smoking, it is the brain’s response to that first dose of nicotine that likely most determines who gets addicted, according to DiFranza’s report published in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics."</p>