Exactly. Nicotine has mental health benefits (e.g., schizophrenia ) and is a nootropic, stimulant, and feel-good drug. By smoking, the poor are trading years in the future for pleasantness now. Calling them stupid or irrational just makes too many assumptions about their opportunities, situations, and goals.

Perhaps we could sell nicotine patches and gum without a prescription? Also, there are substitutes:

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/analysis/harm-reduc...

"Why have Swedes stopped smoking? Because Sweden has adopted a harm-reduction strategy: it has largely replaced deadly cigarettes with a product that supplies users with both nicotine and tobacco yet doesn’t increase the odds of dying the way smoking does. That product is called "snus" (rhymes with goose).

A modern iteration of snuff, snus are little pouches of moist tobacco placed under the upper lip. Scandinavians have been ingesting nicotine via smokeless tobacco since the early 18th century, a habit that changed only during the Second World War, when cigarettes became popular. Smoking peaked in 1980 in Sweden at 34 per cent of the population. Since then, the growing awareness of the dangers of smoking has brought about a steady, year-over-year reduction in the smoking rate, just as it has in much of the western world."

Nicotine patches and gum are available without a prescription in the U.S. Did you intend to be sarcastic?

No, just unaware. I don't smoke or consume nicotine products.

"the poor are trading years in the future for pleasantness now"

This also describes how a lot of people are poor.

> "the poor are trading years in the future for pleasantness now"

> This also describes how a lot of people are poor.

I suppose we should be cheered by your qualification "a lot of," since it seems to indicate that you at least have to acknowledge your growing awareness that some, if not the majority nor vast majority, of the poor are there for structural reasons, rather than shortsightedness.

What of those who are there for reasons other than shortsightedness? What of those for whom shortsightedness is a result of mental health issues? What of those who can see ahead, but see no bright future and are making rational choices in the face of that?

Fortunately, having qualified your remarks in the way you have, you have opened yourself up to a responsibility to think critically about those whom you have dismissed. I wish you the best in that.

"you have opened yourself up to a responsibility to think critically about those whom you have dismissed"

I don't think I dismissed anyone. People make bad decisions on things they are in control of and it makes them more poor. The rich have more self control -- maybe not. Those with good self control tend to be better off -- definitely.

I'm all for the argument that smoking is a rational choice for someone without a lot of money. There is also the compelling argument that poor impulse control, being poor and smoking have a strong correlation. Maybe even as a common cause for poverty and smoking.

Having watched friends spend entire paychecks drinking, smoking, having unprotected sex (with the inevitable consequences), buying new camaros at blistering interest rates, fleetingly fashionable clothes -- I somehow think that my choice to eat mountains of rice and beans and live with roommates somehow had something to do with my relative success.

Sure, you can tell some people it's not their fault, but absolving everyone of responsibility for their choices is not helping them at all.

If you actually believe this, you have never been poor.

Perhaps not all people are poor because of bad decisions, but perhaps at least some are.

No, it really doesn't. Depending on one's discount function, such a trade is perfectly rational.

This thinking also reeks of the 'just world fallacy', in which the predicament of the poor is deemed to be a deserved consequence of their moral failings.

No, being born into poor families with poor job opportunities in poor areas is how a lot of people are poor.

You should expand your horizons.

Maybe those are one and the same thing---being born into a poor family, you inherit the attitudes that kept that family poor. At least, I expect that's a contributing factor. Obviously there's more to it.

Wait, what? I've never felt any of those effects from smoking, and I made sure to inhale deeply. Maybe I'm doing it wrong? Are there people who are genetically unable to get the high?

That's very strange that you've never felt stimulation or increased focus from nicotine! It's possible that you have some genetic variation that causes that or it's possible you're just not self aware, but I couldn't say which.

For an incredible overview of the benefits and harms of nicotine, see Gwen: https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine

This ... is truly a bizarre revelation. I had no idea people actually got such physical pleasure and stimulation from smoking. [1]

I guess it's one of those things that's so obvious no one actually says it. If you think about it, that benefit is never mentioned in debates about smoking and the appropriate government response. I know because I aggressively scour for such upsides, being the "hipster contrarian". Had I known about the pleasure and stimulation of smoking[3], you can bet I would bring it up every time!

Reminds me of "What Universal Human Experiences Are You Missing Without Realizing It?" [2]

Now you might ask, "Did it never seem strange to you that people would suck this disgusting tar into their lungs if it didn't at least feel good or something?"

Well, no. IME, people indulge in a lot of BS without obvious explanation. For example, people claim to like the taste of alcohol[ic drinks], and that is outright ridiculous -- or so I thought, but it was another case of [2]. Also, modern art.

My model of smokers was roughly that, they start doing it to look cool, and then get hooked, so that they have to smoke to fend off the pain of withdrawal. I didn't think the act could feel good itself!

Now that I think about it, people don't mention the good feeling of other drugs in debates about them either. For alcohol, I had a good explanation: those benefits are taboo, and people use the purported taste and refinement of their "fave bev" as "intellectual covering fire" for what they really want, the alcohol high.

In conclusion, the phenomenon in [2] is serious business!

[1] See, for example, the responses to this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14569775

[2] http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/17/what-universal-human-ex...

[3] Incidentally, I read Bostrom's Superintelligence, where he mentions writing the book while being powered by caffeine and nicotine, but I wrote that off (like most purported benefits of smoking) as psychosomatic.

I'm glad you had a revelation and took it so well. Although maybe not as extreme as you, I also used to think nicotine/cigarettes had almost no benefits and was surprised to learn otherwise. I'll go so far as to say as nicotine is quite possibly the most successful nootropic, with modafinil a close second.

Same here.

Never got into smoking tobacco or weed, both just made me feel bad.

You're not alone. I've never felt any effects from smoking cigarettes. I think the effects are incredibly minor compared to those of other substances, to the extent there are effects at all.

Nicotine is also an appetite suppressant. During my leaner days I would often choose cigarettes over food when I could not afford both. (I am no longer poor, nor a smoker. I am about 20 pounds heavier though.)

Nicotine is a drug. And some small studies have hinted at the benefits it confers (along with the risks, both of itself and in the delivery medium, burned (and processed, and adulterated) tobacco).

Their are also significant social and signaling roles.

Until we can have an honest conversation about this, and actually embrace and continuing objective science on it, we aren't going to find the honest and effective solution -- whatever that may be.