08 Feb 2005
Smoking hurts wealth as well as health

Stupidity has finally run amok over Ohio State University.

"We don't have any direct proof, but taking the study results and the federal statistics together, it seems that the money smokers spend on cigarettes comes out of income that normally would be saved," Zagorsky said.

Well: DOH!

Let's see if I can get the logic of this down: people [fill in the blank with habit or activity] spend money to support their [fill in the blank with habit or activity]. If these people didn't engage in [fill in the blank with habit or activity], they wouldn't spend the money on [fill in the blank with habit or activity]. Therefore, [fill in the blank with habit or activity] is a drain on the economy.

I'm sure that the genius who did this study would recommend increasing the price of cigarettes to cure this problem... nothing short of brilliant!

A new study suggests that typical non-smokers' net worth is roughly 50 percent higher than that of light smokers and about twice the level of that of heavy smokers. And that wealth gap grows by about $410, or 4 percent, each year that a person continues to smoke, said Jay Zagorsky, author of the study and a research scientist at Ohio State University's Center for Human Resource Research. Federal statistics on cigarette spending suggest that the wealth reductions are roughly equal to how much smokers spend on their habit.

(link) [Science Blog - Science Blog]

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