Quote:
Originally Posted by ThirdOfFive
I quit smoking cigarettes over 35 years ago now. I quit because (at $0.60 a pack more or less in Minnesota at that time) they were too expensive, and I was downing nearly 3 packs per day at the time. Today? Well, I was there a few months back and saw a person buy a carton of cigs at a convenience store, handed the clerk $100 and got back a couple of bucks, and those weren't even the front-line brands. I remember thinking that at that price, if I was still hooked on cigarettes, I could drink myself to death on some pretty pricy booze before I could smoke myself to death. $200 plus per week to feed an addiction is a LOT of money.
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After my father (2 packs a day) died of lung cancer, my mother (1 pack a day) quit smoking. A year later, she realized that even on her relatively low, fixed income, she had saved enough to go on a cruise. She went on several cruises after that. And this was nearly 30 years ago when cigarettes hadn't been taxed into the stratosphere.
Having lost several relatives and friends to cancer, I have long been virulently anti-tobacco and wished the government would ban the sale of tobacco, a benefit-free poison delivery system. However, the government also once banned the sale of alcohol and all the Prohibition did was create a generation of rich mobsters just like the ban on the sale of recreational drugs has created generations of rich narco traffickers. There is no saving people from their own self destruction, I guess.