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> When it comes to smoking, at least in the US, it has largely become an affliction of the poor and uneducated. We all are capable of addictions. Smoking is t

by bb88 3y ago

> When it comes to smoking, at least in the US, it has largely become an affliction of the poor and uneducated. We all are capable of addictions. Smoking is the one most available to the poor. A lot of smart people get hooked on drugs -- even though they probably shouldn't. Wall street investment bankers and cocaine come to mind -- even though they are maybe some of the smartest people on the planet. > So the main issue is that tackling smoking rates among the poor ... is really about tackling many of the issues of poverty itself. You're right, but your cause and effect are switched: Addiction is more likely to create poverty than the reverse. Not only does it create poverty, but persistent poverty. People would rather get high than clean themselves up and own a house.

RhysU 3y ago
Yeeeeech, I can't handle "the poors are addicted" narrative. Smoking was high-class fashionable awhile back. Then the lower classes caught on as disposable incomes rose and factories made tobacco products within their reach. Necessarily the high class abandoned it because it no longer distinguished them. Your high-class grandchildren will smoke(+). It's purely cyclical fashion and health be damned. To be crude, they will have to compete to get into each others' beds somehow and what better way than eschewing 100 years of their class' ground-truth advice about far-distant medical outcomes? (+) As they wore jeans and played guitars in the 60s. Because those were counter-cultural, low-class markers.
- bb88 3y ago
  >Yeeeeech, I can't handle "the poors are addicted" narrative Jesus dude you made that point yourself -- but with smoking. I'm just saying, solve the addiction problem overall, and you solve a huge problem across all of humanity.