Smoking and socioeconomic class

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Smoking continues to decline among upper and middle class Americans.  But not among those in the lower classes.  Should anything be done about this, can anything be done about this:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/01/14/why-the-wealthy-stopped-smoking-but-the-poor-didnt/%3foutputType=amp

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Cigars and pot, my man.

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

7 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Cigars and pot, my man.

 

Smoking is smoking regardless of what you smoke.

https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/disparities/low-ses/index.htm

[Luzifer's right hand]

But I heard nicotine protects from Covid-19! Are you in league with Bill Gates? Are you Thanos Ser Scot? ARE YOU AN EVIL NED FLANDERS? 

WHERE ARE MY PILLS! 

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

7 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

But I heard nicotine protects from Covid-19! Are you in league with Bill Gates? Are you Thanos Ser Scot? ARE YOU AN EVIL NED FLANDERS? 

WHERE ARE MY PILLS! 

 

Scot is clearly part of the global conspiracy to kill the platypuses. 

[Fez]

33 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Smoking continues to decline among upper and middle class Americans.  But not among those in the lower classes.  Should anything be done about this, can anything be done about this:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/01/14/why-the-wealthy-stopped-smoking-but-the-poor-didnt/%3foutputType=amp

We already have (unless vaping fucks things up and leads to an uptick in cigarette use eventually). Rates of smoking among kids have dropped like a stone and that will eventually lead to lower overall rates among everybody. There is some wealth variation sure, but even among kids from lower income families, the rates of smoking are down a ton.

Past-month cigarette use has dropped among high school students from a high of 28.3% in 1997 to 3.7% in 2019

[DMC]

44 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Smoking continues to decline among upper and middle class Americans.  But not among those in the lower classes.  Should anything be done about this

I'm not sure anything can be done about it.  Poorer classes engage in more risky behavior across the board, that's fairly inherent.  As are sin taxes, which like the lotto are a great way to get the poor's money back to states.  Like Fez said though, I think this problem will resolve itself.  Young people do not smoke at nearly the levels even my cohort did - and I'm not that old damnit! - and the old ones will die off.  Quickly.    

[OldGimletEye]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Smoking continues to decline among upper and middle class Americans.  But not among those in the lower classes.  Should anything be done about this, can anything be done about this:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/01/14/why-the-wealthy-stopped-smoking-but-the-poor-didnt/%3foutputType=amp

Scott, off the top of my head, I think cigarettes have a fairly high elasticity. That means smoking is fairly sensitive to price.

One idea, put a tax on cigarettes and remit the proceeds back to people who are struggling financially. Though admittedly this likely only a partial solution.

I would say "more education" but by now I'm inclined to believe everyone's got the memo.

Perhaps, more research is needed into why people in the lower classes engage in more risky behavior. Maybe, they just have a high degree of fatalism that they think it just doesn't matter what they do.

[A wilding]

34 minutes ago, Fez said:

We already have (unless vaping fucks things up and leads to an uptick in cigarette use eventually). Rates of smoking among kids have dropped like a stone and that will eventually lead to lower overall rates among everybody. There is some wealth variation sure, but even among kids from lower income families, the rates of smoking are down a ton.

Past-month cigarette use has dropped among high school students from a high of 28.3% in 1997 to 3.7% in 2019

Absolutely. This is the situation in the UK too. However the tobacco industry is trying hard to reverse this with vaping, so governments need to tighten up on it in the same way they have tightened up on other forms of tobacco use. (Sadly the current UK government has largely failed to do this.)

[DMC]

58 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

One idea, put a tax on cigarettes

This motivated me to look up how much cigarettes are taxed by state, and I found this.  I think my suicidal vice is already sufficiently providing the government's coffers.

Quote

When a consumer purchased a pack of cigarettes in 2016, federal and state taxes made up 44.3 percent of the final price, on average.

 

[sologdin]

Perhaps, more research is needed into why people in the lower classes engage in more risky behavior. Maybe, they just have a high degree of fatalism that they think it just doesn't matter what they do.

fictive autonomy found in purportedly voluntary decisions taken at the corporeal level and disregarding alleged authority, as surrogate for manifest lack thereof otherwise in late capitalist society? 

[DMC]

8 minutes ago, sologdin said:

fictive autonomy found in purportedly voluntary decisions taken at the corporeal level and disregarding alleged authority, as surrogate for manifest lack thereof otherwise in late capitalist society?

This is a long way of echoing Marx's opium of the people, but yeah.  

[Prue]

I guess it's a question of role models and peer pressure. If smoking is widely seen as a) a grown-up thing b) something glamorous c) something that rebels/the cool kids do, teenagers will start smoking at a higher percentage. And if you start as a teenager, it's really hard to stop. 

In Germany, there are still many smokers, but many teenagers seem to have migrated to smoking shisha. Especially the kids of Turkish descent who like to hang out with their friends in shisha bars. No idea if smoking shisha really makes people more likely to also smoke tobacco, but I've heard about that theory, too. 

I'm so, sooo glad that smoking isn't allowed in restaurants and cafes any more. I really hated how horrible clothes/hair stank after visiting a restaurant, even if you're a non-smoker. Maybe giving less opportunities to smoke also made smoking less popular. 

[kairparavel]

Given how much tobacco is produced worldwide, smoking and cigarettes will never go away unless alternate uses of said tobacco is found. Or those fields are repurposed to something that has a market and can grow there. There's an economic toll if you just up and eliminate cigarettes/drive down demand. Plus Philip Morris still needs their $$$.

And though smoking rates may be down in the US, they are rising in other parts of the (poorer/developing) world.

https://tobaccoatlas.org/topic/consumption/

[DMC]

3 minutes ago, Prue said:

In Germany, there are still many smokers, but many teenagers seem to have migrated to smoking shisha.

I wouldn't know about any increase in frequency among hookah bars, but this does raise one an important aspect I've found to be very real anecdotally:  vaping.  I think they can be a great way to quit, seen it happen with friends but unfortunately it didn't help me.  But I've also talked to way too many kids that say they never smoked cigarettes, they just like vaping.  I'm just...at a loss.

[Luzifer's right hand]

Just now, DMC said:

I wouldn't know about any increase in frequency among hookah bars, but this does raise one an important aspect I've found to be very real anecdotally:  vaping.  I think they can be a great way to quit, seen it happen with friends but unfortunately it didn't help me.  But I've also talked to way too many kids that say they never smoked cigarettes, they just like vaping.  I'm just...at a loss.

Why? I mean nicotine is pretty good drug and it comes in Red Bull flavour now.

[DireWolfSpirit]

3 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Smoking continues to decline among upper and middle class Americans.  But not among those in the lower classes.  Should anything be done about this, can anything be done about this:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/01/14/why-the-wealthy-stopped-smoking-but-the-poor-didnt/%3foutputType=amp

It does sound better in the thread  title where you use "socio-economic class", but in your post you just drop it and go right to "upper/lower class".

We stigmatize the poor enough, I don't care for referring to people as upper or lower class based on income. Plenty of upper income people are low class, this story just breaking about 2 NFL millionaires robbing a party at a gunpoint for instance. (I'm not even bothering to use examples of the vulgar Trump family with their charity theft, etc.)

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/14/us/nfl-players-wanted-alleged-armed-robbery-spt/index.html

Or are you using upper income people as your example for the lower class Scott? If so then the the misunderstanding is on me .

[Martell Spy]

Pretty sure cigarette taxes do not work. My Mom was a smoker and I remember her having me drive to a reservation smoke shop to buy cheaper cartons of smokes. And she was a pretty poor person, was on SSI.

My brother is a smoker as well. He quit many years, then went back to it a couple years ago. Stress was the cause he said.

Oh, also we were in public housing a couple years when I was a kid. There was this kind of network of women there that were smokers and my Mom was part of it. If you were out of smokes you'd go to the apartment of one of these women in the network, or send your kid there, and ask to bum a smoke. And it worked because different people had money and thus access to smokes at different times. And you always shared when you could because the time will come when you need to be asking for smokes. Maybe someone got the child support recently or the like.

[OldGimletEye]

5 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Pretty sure cigarette taxes do not work. My Mom was a smoker and I remember her having me drive to a reservation smoke shop to buy cheaper cartons of smokes. And she was a pretty poor person, was on SSI.

My brother is a smoker as well. He quit many years, then went back to it a couple years ago. Stress was the cause he said.

If cigarette taxes did not work, then the price elasticity of cigarettes would be 0. Except, there are a number of econometric studies that do in fact find that the price elasticity of cigarettes are not 0.

Now if the argument is that they may put too much of burden on the poor, that might be a meritorious argument.

[Martell Spy]

8 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

If cigarette taxes did not work, then the price elasticity of cigarettes would be 0. Except, there are a number of econometric studies that do in fact find that the price elasticity of cigarettes are not 0.

Now if the argument is that they may put too much of burden on the poor, that might be a meritorious argument.

Well, my point is you'd have to raise the taxes high enough to make it so they can't pay rent. And live with the outcomes from that. You might as well pass a full ban if you are going to do that.

The taxes as we've passed them do not work in my experience. My brother is still smoking and he can scarcely afford it. People adjust to scarcity and it's a powerful addiction. 

$400 a pack ought to do it. Are you advocating for that? Even if you had the will to do this and were willing to put up with the suffering of people then lobbyists would put a stop to it.