Smoking and socioeconomic class

[sologdin]

so then the the misunderstanding is on me .

the article tracks cigarette consumption by income stratification--income as marker of class has weberian pedigree (as the thread makes explicit), but this need not imply a morality. 

 

opium of the people

i hadn't considered smoking as religious, the heart in a heartless world, the sigh of the oppressed creature.  the suffering of the smoker as an expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering?  dunno.  

maybe it is an aristotelian poiesis, though the people who do it think it a praxis; it can't be a praxis, because those in thrall of it are not free, a prerequisite. rather it is a poiesis that produces the opiate effect and illusion of sovereignty?  again, dunno.

[Rippounet]

Well, we happen to be in the midst of a global pandemic that happens to be -mainly- a respiratory disease...

[OldGimletEye]

8 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

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. 

Sure, if the goal was necessarily to everyone to quit.

But, I'm not sure why getting some reduction in smoking is not a legitimate goal.

Finally, I'm well aware of the addiction of smoking as I used to be a smoker. And it was an utter pain in the ass to quit. Before beating the habit, I really had a hard time beating the habit for good. I had to do several "work arounds" to finally beat the habit, including gum, patches, and exercise to stop. So, I can sympathize with people that find a hard time quitting. But, a few anecdotal experiences aren't really great in telling us how a policy will work.

[Martell Spy]

Just now, OldGimletEye said:

Sure, if the goal was necessarily to everyone to quit.

But, I'm not sure why getting some reduction in smoking is not a legitimate goal.

Finally, I'm well aware of the addiction of smoking as I used to be a smoker. And it was an utter pain in the ass to quit. Before beating the habit, I really had a hard time beating the habit for good. I had to do several "work arounds" to finally beat the habit, including gum, patches, and exercise to stop. So, I can sympathize with people that find a hard time quitting. But, a few anecdotal experiences are really great in telling us how a policy will work.

Hey just edited that as you posted, sorry.

[Fez]

29 minutes ago, 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.

Vaping can be a good way to quit for adults. Maybe. There's not enough research for sure yet. But at the very least they are less dangerous (unless you're using a vape that had vitamin e acetate as a thickening agent).

However, there's a lot of evidence that vaping is just an unnecessary risk for kids. They aren't smoking cigarettes anyway, so there's not a substitution issue. Instead its that vapes aren't seen dangerous (when they are quite dangerous, but its less than cigarettes), often are seen as cool, and are barely regulated at all.

[DMC]

10 minutes ago, Fez said:

They aren't smoking cigarettes anyway, so there's not a substitution issue.

Yeah that's my hangup.  The conception of e-cigarettes seemed to be cigarettes --> vaping --> off nicotine.  Whereas kids are doing the inverse of no nicotine --> vaping --> lifelong nicotine addiction.  Reminds me of the famous quote about giving up smoking doesn't actually make you live longer, it just seems longer.

[A wilding]

A cynic would say that "cigarettes --> vaping --> off nicotine" was just the marketing ploy of tobacco companies keen to come up with a way of reversing their long term decline in sales.

[DMC]

1 minute ago, A wilding said:

A cynic would say that "cigarettes --> vaping --> off nicotine" was just the marketing ploy of tobacco companies keen to come up with a way of reversing their long term decline in sales.

You're almost certainly right, and I dunno, it's not something I've looked into on the aggregate level.  But I know a handful of friends that moving from cigs to vaping really did work.  I tried it myself years back, but like I said, didn't work out.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

55 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

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)

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 .

As per the article I cite people who have lower incomes (that’s all I mean by “lower”) tend to smoke more than those in higher income brackets.  

I’m not offering a moral indictment in the use of “upper” and “lower”.

[OldGimletEye]

4 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

Also, I forgot to add, that some sort of financial help likely needs to be made available for nicotine cessation. As somebody that went through his fair share of gums, patches and so forth, it can get quite expensive. Quitting cold turkey isn't a realistic option for most people.

[Fez]

52 minutes ago, DMC said:

Yeah that's my hangup.  The conception of e-cigarettes seemed to be cigarettes --> vaping --> off nicotine.  Whereas kids are doing the inverse of no nicotine --> vaping --> lifelong nicotine addiction.  Reminds me of the famous quote about giving up smoking doesn't actually make you live longer, it just seems longer.

There's a lot of reasons why vaping became so attractive to kids even though they weren't smoking beforehand. I've literally written papers (not peer reviewed) on it. But the big ones are that there's lots of peer pressure to vape, little belief that vaping is harmful at all, it's easy to buy vapes, and the industry is mostly unregulated (except for advertising, which finally got into place recently).

Most surveys of kids have large majorities of them saying they'd stop vaping if they saw proof that vaping was dangerous. The problem is that even though the research is out there (nicotine independent of all the other carcinogens in cigarettes can still do a number of the body; especially among kids), it's not getting through to them the way that the message that cigarettes are dangerous did. Hell, even vaping flavored waters with no nicotine at all is dangerous because of how unregulated the vaporizers themselves are; studies regularly find heavy metal particles in the liquids, which flaked off from the heating coils.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, 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.

This is a smoke screen.

You're the rare clever Bond villain! You've been behind the vaping epidemic all along.

[DMC]

5 minutes ago, Fez said:

The problem is that even though the research is out there (nicotine independent of all the other carcinogens in cigarettes can still do a number of the body; especially among kids), it's not getting through to them the way that the message that cigarettes are dangerous did.

Gotta say I don't really have much sympathy for this, or just generally the concept that further "education" is going to change kids' minds.  Maybe it's just me, but I had DARE classes when I was about 8-9.  The effect was by 10-11 many of my friends and I were already getting into drinking, smoking, and drugs. 

Anyway, I've seen tons of anti-smoking-funded ads warning about the dangers/equivalency of vaping over the past few years.  Ya know, the cheesy ones that just make you want to do the opposite of what such douches are imploring.  I think such efforts are good so as to serve as stigmatizing the product.  At the same time, I'm not sure any further funding or efforts are going to alter the behavior of those inclined.  Some of us are just really stupid.

[IheartIheartTesla]

I think in theory the vaping idea was good, where you reduce the risk by eliminating many of the carcinogens, leaving mainly the nicotine. I also think we may see better health outcomes as a result of that because of those who made the switch.

But at the same time, it is a stop gap measure. I am thinking of an alternative technology to cigarettes that would be similar to the Impossible Burger - tastes, looks and feels like meat but isnt real meat, You would need to create a fake cigarette that has the same 'feel', and maybe has an addictive substance in it (or not) that is entirely or mostly harmless. Some of the tax money should be used for research on that.

[Rippounet]

1 hour ago, A wilding said:

A cynic would say that "cigarettes --> vaping --> off nicotine" was just the marketing ploy of tobacco companies keen to come up with a way of reversing their long term decline in sales.

Not at first I think. From my readings I gathered the tobacco industry was terrified of vaping, at least at first. It was something they didn't control that truly threatened their long-term existence.
That was a while ago though.

[Iskaral Pust]

For socioeconomic health behavior problems, smoking is just one of a myriad: obesity, less exercise, more alcohol and narcotics, fewer health check-ups, more sedentary lifestyle and yet also more taxing physical labor.  Some of those stem from constraints on lower income people (manual jobs, longer commutes to houses they can afford, expensive health insurance, etc) and some are hedonistic choices for short term pleasure over long term health.  Education levels more than strictly income are predictive of positive health behaviors; thanks to teachers, adjunct professors and the fine arts for providing samples of high education and low income for contrast.

I’m not sure if the current wellness focus of the highly educated is a fad or a long term shift, but we clearly see a cognitive distinction in the strategic life building of the higher socioeconomic classes: more years spent in education, waiting longer (more resources) to have kids, and then having fewer kids in whom more is invested for their education and development, relatively abstemious lifestyles, more exercise, more meditation, more self-examination and self-reflection, more consciousness of environmental toxins.  In fact they socially compete to be more responsible on these dimensions instead of pursuing hedonistic lifestyles that would be easily available to them.  Except wine consumption.  That gets a hall pass for some reason.

Smoking is no longer a big problem in the US.  As a generational fad it has moved on.  The lifelong addicts it created will have worse health, but there are fewer of them to worry about.  But as smoking declines, it will be replaced by other hedonistic choices, whether over-eating, alcohol or other.  That approach to life isn’t going away.

When I was in high school, all the rebels/tough/cool kids smoked.  It was an obvious badge of anti-authority for social posturing and peer pressure.  It was also the best measurable predictor of bad education outcomes.  Just grouping people by smoker vs non-smoker was probably the easiest objective way to identify who would do well or not at school.  So smoking does not stem from poor education, it’s a co-morbidity (as it were) stemming from underlying problems that manifest in poor education.

[DMC]

9 minutes ago, Iskaral Pust said:

Just grouping people by smoker vs non-smoker was probably the easiest objective way to identify who would do well or not at school.

The tonnage of endogeneity problems with this statement intimates me.

[Fez]

32 minutes ago, DMC said:

Gotta say I don't really have much sympathy for this, or just generally the concept that further "education" is going to change kids' minds.  Maybe it's just me, but I had DARE classes when I was about 8-9.  The effect was by 10-11 many of my friends and I were already getting into drinking, smoking, and drugs. 

Anyway, I've seen tons of anti-smoking-funded ads warning about the dangers/equivalency of vaping over the past few years.  Ya know, the cheesy ones that just make you want to do the opposite of what such douches are imploring.  I think such efforts are good so as to serve as stigmatizing the product.  At the same time, I'm not sure any further funding or efforts are going to alter the behavior of those inclined.  Some of us are just really stupid.

So here's the thing: There's education that works and education that doesn't work. And the two are not equivalent. Most drug education (especially the kinds that were in place when were kids) didn't work. "This is your brain on drugs" was total garbage, and there's evidence it increased rates of drug use. On the other hand, the "Tips from former smokers" from 10 years ago was a huge success. Just because some education doesn't work doesn't mean none of it works. The anti-vaping ads you've seen don't work. We don't know yet what will work. But the fact that the current ones are bad is no reason not to try to find ones that are good.

There's always going to be some stupid people for sure. But the high school vaping rate is over 20% now. There's tons of kids vaping who don't do any other drugs, and all evidence suggests they won't do other drugs. But vaping itself is still kinda dangerous, especially for kids, so its worth figuring out what kind of message would get through to them.

[OldGimletEye]

3 hours ago, Martell Spy said:

$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.

I'd assume that the demand curve for cigarettes is much more inelastic than the supply curve for cigarettes. That means of course for any given tax, the consumer of cigarettes is more likely to bear the burden of tax. However, even assuming, that the demand curve is much more inelastic, I'd venture a guess that cigarette makers would find cigarette production unprofitable well before a tax was imposed making a pack of cigarettes $400.

Of course, having a tax wedge so large that suppliers would just find making cigarettes unprofitable, would be tantamount to banning cigarettes completely. I could have, of  course, suggested banning cigarettes completely, but I didn't go that route because I'm a bit uncomfortable with having the government telling adults that they can't do something (so long of course that it doesn't directly harm another person), even if their conduct is bad for them and imposes some cost on others. I'd suspect that most adults engage in some bad habits and would get quite annoyed if the there was an ever growing list of outright proscribed conduct even if it was "for their own good." I guess you could say I'm trying to balance personal liberty and societal interest.

Smoking of course has significant cost to society and I'm not confident that smokers, particularly young smokers, internalize all the future cost to themselves . When your in 20s, getting into your 40s probably seems like its a million years away, and it probably seems like once your in 40s or 50s you have foot in the grave anyway, so a smoking related health problems don't matter much, since your already half dead. I can assure the youngins out there that getting into your 40s isn't the end of your life and you can actually feel quite well so long as you take care of yourself. I'm not of course just picking on young people as most people are probably myopic and just don't internalize the cost of an action 20 or 30 years away. From what I know off the top of my head there is some evidence that young smokers are more sensitive to price changes than older smokers.

In a nutshell, for reasons of respecting people's autonomy I'm not in favor just outright banning smoking, but am more favorable at deterring people at the margin because of its cost. Finally, I'd never represent higher taxes as the total solution, but only a partial one, that would likely have to be combined with other policies to reduce smoking.

[DMC]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

But the fact that the current ones are bad is no reason not to try to find ones that are good.

Fair enough.

29 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Of course, having a tax wedge so large that suppliers would just find making cigarettes unprofitable, would be tantamount to banning cigarettes completely.

Yeah a prohibition on cigarettes is much more likely than when we'd get to the point of a $400 pack of cigarettes.  Either way, just like any other drug, people will find other avenues.