In 2008, tobacco companies spent nearly $420 million dollars pushing their products -- in the Show Me State alone.
How much did Missouri spend to counter that marketing bonanza and prevent kids from picking up the habit that kills 9,500 state residents and costs $2.1 billion in health-care bills each year?
Just $2.4 million.
But times are tough and state budgets are strained to the breaking point, right? Well, here's the part that makes health advocates choke. In 1998, the four largest tobacco companies entered into an agreement with the attorneys general of 46 states, agreeing to shell out more than $200 billion over 25 years to compensate states for the medical costs associated with smoking.
But a new study released yesterday by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids slams Missouri for spending just a sliver of that annual chunk of change on programs related to, uh, smoking. According to the report, Missouri ranks 49th in the nation, using less than 1 percent of the $253 million in tobacco settlement money and taxes it took in last year on smoking prevention.
No wonder 24 percent of Missouri high school students smoke -- a rate 4 percent higher than the national average.
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Agreeing with Bob on this one. Nonsmokers do not have the right to legislate their preferences upon others. They love to blather on about how it's "for the children" and "medical costs" - great, I think motorcycles are dangerous, and should be banned. Let's ban Harleys on all public streets. It's for the children, after all. And the almighty dollar.
Even non smokers, like myself, think these laws that stomp on privatly owned businesses are going to far. 60 years ago, kids would freely admit that they smoke. Nowdays, with police hassling many kids seen smoking, no underage person is going to admit to a nosy adult who may be a cop that they smoke.
"many have the opinion that they crossed the line"
Are there any non-smokers in your imaginary "many" statistic? I doubt it. From the Gallup Poll:
"Gallup first asked Americans about their smoking habits more than 60 years ago, and recent Gallup polling finds Americans reporting among the lowest smoking rates ever measured (24%). The percentage of Americans saying they have smoked cigarettes in the past week did not drop to approximately one-quarter of the population until the mid-1990s."
http://www.gallup.com/poll/284...
When anti smoking people were using education as their primary method, the smoking rates were steadily declining for 40 years. Now that they got into invasive bans using snitchlines and law enforcement for privately owned businesses, many have the opinion that they crossed the line. In the 60s, people burned draft cards to protest. Now they will be lighting cigarettes.
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