Smoking In U.S. Declines Sharply (Cigarette Sales At a 54-Year Low)

[onehandle]

Americans smoked fewer cigarettes last year than at any time since 1951, and the nation's per capita consumption of tobacco fell to levels not seen since the early 1930s, the association of state attorneys general reported yesterday.

Using data the federal government gathers when it collects taxes on cigarette sales, the group found a 4.2 percent decline in 2005 alone and an overall drop of more than 20 percent since tobacco companies reached a legal settlement with the states in 1998.

Association leaders and other tobacco-control advocates hailed the decline as a sign that sometimes-controversial developments triggered by the $246 billion settlement have been effective. The drop was a result, they said, of factors that include the sharply higher cost of cigarettes, restrictions on cigarette advertising and a shift in public perceptions as the dangers of smoking are more aggressively and widely publicized.

"I think we're reaching a tipping point, where the image of tobacco is that it's unhealthy and dangerous, and not glamorous like years ago or neutral like the cigarette companies say now," said Tom Miller, Iowa's attorney general and co-chairman of the National Association of Attorneys General's tobacco committee.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/08/AR2006030802368.html

People are getting poorer. Who can afford this disgusting, self-destructive addiction?