Reply #123: let me break it down for you [View All]

[paulk]

I didn't say that 87% of people smoke -

I said that, of people who smoke, 87% of them start smoking before the age of 21.

My source for this was the People vs Philip Morris RICO case, which my wife worked on and I'm therefore somewhat familiar with.

Other sources actually put that number higher -

http://www.cancer.org/docroot/PED/content/PED_10_2X_Child_and_Teen_Tobacco_Use.asp

http://65.222.37.230/PDF/Youthand_smoking_6_9_2005.pdf

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My point being that young people are not good at determining who is telling the truth and who not. I would argue that young people are exceptionally bad at it, actually. Our world is rife with examples of crappy products marketed specifically to the youth culture. Brittney Spears comes to mind. I don't think politics is in some special catagory - it's marketed as a product just like
everything else. The "truth" has very little to do with it.