If we were a more liberal country, we'd give people lottery and cigarette stamps.
Poor NYers spend 25% of income on cigarettes:
zerohedge.com
Poorest people in America spend 9% of their $13,000 annual income on lotteries
dailymail.co.uk
Wait'll they legalize pot. Then we can measure what percent they spend on weed.
Heh:
D.C. government program to subsidize pot for poor patients
washingtontimes.com
Looks like illegal drug use is becoming a marker for poverty and lack of education. Funny to hear old liberal dinosaurs like koan, bent, and rat brag about their regular dope use. When they were young, they thought it was something smart, with-it people did. Now its something losers and dropouts do - like buy bunches of lottery tickets.
....
* With the exception of heroin and crack among the poor, the use of illegal drugs in the nation appears to have peaked, including the snorting of powdered cocaine.
* Federally financed studies show that the people turning away from drugs are the most educated and affluent. The poorest and least-educated have continued or increased their drug use.
* Crack, a smokable form of cocaine, has largely remained a poor people's drug. Its rise in the past two years has had devastating effects on poor neighborhoods, but it has failed to make the same inroads into the middle class.
* The most deadly impact of illegal drug use is probably yet to come, as tens of thousands of intravenous drug users, their sexual partners and their children contract acquired immune deficiency syndrome. Most of those people will be poor.
.....
Statistics indicate that outside of the poorest neighborhoods, the nation's 20-year affair with illegal drugs is on the decline.
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, marijuana use peaked in 1978, and by 1985, 7 out of 10 high school seniors believed marijuana use to be harmful. Young people's use of hallucinogens, like LSD and PCP, or ''angel dust,'' has fallen since 1979. A Different Generation
In 1985, a national household survey conducted by the University of Kentucky for the National Institute on Drug Abuse asked 18-to-25-year-olds if they had smoked marijuana in the last month. It found that people who never graduated from high school were most likely to be using the drug. The better educated the young people were, the survey found, the less they were using marijuana.
Among an earlier generation of smokers - people 35 and over, who probably developed their attitudes toward marijuana in the late 60's and early 70's - the findings were just the reverse. It was the college-educated who were most likely to be smoking marijuana.
........
According to the household survey of 18-to-25-year-olds, the people most likely to have used cocaine in the previous month in 1982 were those who graduated from college. The least likely to have used cocaine were those who never finished high school. Among college graduates, 13 percent said they had used cocaine in the past month, while among those without high school diplomas, only 4 percent had used cocaine.
But by 1985, the situation was just the opposite. Only 3 percent of college graduates said they used cocaine in the last month. But 10 percent of people who never finished high school said they used the drug. Since the survey did not include people without homes, it may have understated drug use among the poorest and least-educated, according to Prof. Harwin Voss of the University of Kentucky, who helped direct the study.
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nytimes.com |
