Hi, Doc.

It wasn't the bad news/research, viz-a-viz tobacco, that decreased the percentage of smokers ... it was the laws and taxes.

When I was first able to legally purchase cigarettes, regular American brands (Winston, Marlboro, et al) were under three dollars a carton ... translating to around twenty-eight cents per pack, after sales tax.

A carton of Marlboros, today, runs around seventy dollars after sales tax (perhaps seventy-two?).

Index those prices for inflation ... should put minimum wage at around fifty to sixty dollars per hour.

Then, if you do purchase them .... you cannot even go outside, in some locales, to pollute the environment with all of those carcinogens.

That, and that alone, explains the drop of smokers from 75 to 80 percent of the adult population to today's slightly over 20%.

When they start taxing obesity at those same levels ... then, just maybe ... you'll see a decrease in cured and red meat consumption.

Highly doubtful that we'll see that in our lifetimes.