Re: Re: Re: yet another US electile disfunction commentary

[Rob Schaap <carob@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

G'day Michael,

I don't say prices don't convince some to quit the habit, but, by and large,
smokers are addicts, and that rather defeats price elasticity.  Also, as the
public assault on smoking has been so concerted for so long, it is hard to
say how much of the decline in smoking is down to the enormous price rises
here.  I do know that poorer people and women now smoke more than any other
group in this country (indeed, young women are taking to it with gusto -
perhaps tobacco's residual image as symbol of quasi-male power projection is
a factor, or its new-found rebellious odour - that and the fact that tobacco
is a form of self-medication for the stresses that attend lower-order
employment - where boredom and tension (both inspirational of the craving,
I've found to my cost) are paradoxically and perpetually coexistent.
There's something very convivial about sharing a cancerous cloud, too.  At
any rate, my gut feeling is your thesis might not hold.

Self-medicatingly yours,
Rob.

>True enough, but don't the adverse consequences of tobacco hit the
working-class
>harder?  So, discouraging smoking by taxes might have positive consequences
over the
>long run.
>
>Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
>> Hey, sin taxes hit the working class harder than the rich.  So why
>> not chuck tobacco taxers out of the window, too?
>>
>> Yoshie
>
>--
>
>Michael Perelman
>Economics Department
>California State University
>michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Chico, CA 95929
>530-898-5321
>fax 530-898-5901
>
>