{"id":15265,"date":"2010-11-10T17:43:32","date_gmt":"2010-11-10T22:43:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=15265"},"modified":"2012-01-06T14:12:48","modified_gmt":"2012-01-06T20:12:48","slug":"it-aint-illegal-they-know-it-aint-good-for-em-and-they-dont-give-a-rip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=15265","title":{"rendered":"It aint illegal. They know it aint good for ’em. And they don’t give a rip."},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t begrudge your choice to smoke cigarettes as long as you:<\/p>\n

1) Keep it out of my face.<\/p>\n

2) Keep it out of my kids’ face.<\/p>\n

3) Quit throwing them out of your god-damned window.<\/p>\n

4) Pay your fair share: don’t expect me to pay higher life, disability or health insurance premiums. You <\/em>should though.<\/p>\n

5) Let me bum one off of you once a year or so for old times.<\/p>\n

But seriously, if you don’t know smoking is dangerous by now, is it because the government hasn’t done an adequate job of edumacating you?<\/p>\n

Apparently the government thinks you’re so damn stupid that the dangers can only be conveyed to you in pictures<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Corpses, cancer patients and diseased lungs are among the images the federal government plans<\/a> for larger, graphic warning labels that would take up half of each pack of cigarettes sold in the United States.<\/p>\n

Whether smokers addicted to nicotine will see them as a reason to quit remains a question.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sounds like another shovel-ready project to me.<\/p>\n

The share of Americans who smoke has fallen dramatically since 1970, from nearly 40 percent to about 20 percent, but the rate has stalled since about 2004. About 46 million adults in the U.S. smoke cigarettes.<\/p>\n

In the same period, the average cost per pack has gone from 38 cents to $5.33. Much of those increases are from state and federal taxes.<\/p>\n

It’s unclear why declines in smoking have stalled. Some experts have cited tobacco company discounts or lack of funding for programs to discourage smoking or to help smokers quit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I would submit to you that there are a certain percentage of us that are going to smoke cigarettes.\u00a0 They like to smoke. It aint illegal. They know it aint good for ’em. And they don’t give a rip.<\/p>\n

In the mean time are we to assume the federal government intends to spend more and more of everyone’s<\/em> tax dollars until there are no <\/em>smokers left? Maybe we should just let evolution run its course.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t begrudge your choice to smoke cigarettes as long as you: 1) Keep it out of my face. 2) Keep it out of my kids’ face. 3) Quit throwing them out of your god-damned window. 4) Pay your fair share: don’t expect me to pay higher life, disability or health insurance premiums. You should […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":228,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,51,49],"tags":[50],"class_list":["post-15265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-care","category-liberal-tyranny","category-science","tag-evolution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/228"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15265"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25420,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15265\/revisions\/25420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}