Tobacco Use in West Virginia Source Here
| High school students who smoke | 27.6% (25,900) |
| Male high school students who use smokeless or spit tobacco | 27.0% (females use much lower) |
| Kids (under 18) who become new daily smokers each year | 3,200 |
| Kids exposed to secondhand smoke at home | 128,000 |
| Packs of cigarettes bought or smoked by kids each year | 5.9 million |
| Adults in West Virginia who smoke | 26.9% (384,500) |
Deaths in West Virginia From Smoking
| Adults who die each year from their own smoking | 3,900 |
| Kids now under 18 and alive in West Virginia who will ultimately die prematurely from smoking | 46,000 |
| Adult nonsmokers who die each year from exposure to secondhand smoke | 200 to 560 |
Smoking-Caused Monetary Costs in West Virginia
| Annual health care costs in West Virginia directly caused by smoking | $690 million |
| – Portion covered by the state Medicaid program | $229 million |
| Residents’ state & federal tax burden from smoking-caused government expenditures | $591 per household |
| Smoking-caused productivity losses in West Virginia | $994 million |
Tobacco Industry Influence in West Virginia
| Annual tobacco industry marketing expenditures nationwide | $13.4 billion |
| Estimated portion spent for West Virginia marketing each year | $132.0 million |
Filed under: Education of Children |
Harrisoncounty's Weblog 
Uh, so nicotine is a gateway drug to IV heroin ? Oh, no. I forgot : nicotoine ( like booze ) is legal, and is not used by dirty, shifty-eyed scoundrels in back alleys. So, this tautological argument precludes nicotine ( and booze ) from being a gateway drug. Maybe nicotine ( and booze ) is an exit-door drug — yeah, an “escape drug”. Uh,so, then, uh, maybe all the kids should be smoking cigarettes and drinking booze to protect them from other — what’ll it be ? — “merry go round drugs. The kind which comes and goes — sometimes they’re close to you and you want to use ’em ; other times they’re far away and out of mind.
My head is spinning.
So, let’s keep it simple with two alternatives:
(1)Make every drug legal and unregulated and untaxed by the state.
(2)make every drug a capital offense. Just tell the cops to shoot ’em, right there and then
But, one thing is for sure : the middle ground at present ain’t working.
[…] harrisoncounty wrote a fantastic post today on “Smoking in WV”Here’s ONLY a quick extractSmoking kills more people than alcohol, AIDS, car crashes, illegal drugs, murders, and suicides combined — and thousands more die from other tobacco-related causes — such as fires caused by smoking (more than 1000 deaths/year … […]
Real, legitimate, honest-to-Gd question :
Do kids use nicotine to cope and function in school ?
They hand out condoms in some jurisdictions ; maybe the schools should hand out Nicoderm patches. Yeah, and without the parents permission.
OK, but , if they start to improve academically, we’ll then label it a “performance enhancing drug”, and then start doing piss testing for it during WESTEST.
Uh, excuse me — glug, glug — while I use my state authorized Jack Daniels to medicate my spinning head — glug — There. I’m fortified — much better.
Oh, and on the issue of academic-enhancing drugs : if Francis Crick — the Nobel Prize winner for elucidating the three dimensional structure of DNA from a bewildering amount of wet table-top chemistry, known biological function and Xray crystallographic results — were alive, he would confirm that his success was due to LSD. It was legal and Crick was quite familiar with it and used it on other occasions with expected results. He knew what he was dealing with, and knew that LSD could expand his mind to get control of the problem.
So, what will be the consequences if “we, society”, through the force of the state, completely eliminate nicotine from the schools ? Interesting mobius : using reason to expand reason — albeit temporarily — to improve everyone’s lot permanently. So, what else are we missing out on. There are a whole lot of patients, physicians and researchers who would tell the nannynazis to take a hike ; ditto for those in high school.
“We, society”, can’t answer that for so many, many reasons, but we have traditionally let free members in society decide these and other more complicated matters for themselves. They are the ones watching the cost input and the returning consequences. Free individuals can answer it — just ask ’em when the authorities aren’t watching. Society doesn’t use force — it’s not very sociable — but the state has no qualms. That’s there livelihood.