How do you get payments from the tobacco master settlement agreement?

@cherokeepatti: well, at least the government made out ok.

@katielass: They're nothing but a bag of bitches in my opinion.

@cherokeepatti: Yeah. Oh did you know that obamacare doesn't cover Chantix to help you stop smoking? Should we conclude that democrats want us to die early from cancer or COPD? I shouldn't be complaining at least women get free birth control pills. And if they remember to take them, no pregnancy.

@katielass: Well the Senate passed a $1.50 a pack tax on cigarettes this time

@cherokeepatti: Damn. When I started smoking a pack cost 25cents. Yep, 25 cents. Of course I was a kid.

@katielass: I remember when they were less than that, put a quarter in the machine and get a pack of cigarettes with either matches taped on each pack or a few pennies in change...

@cherokeepatti: I remember those cigarette machines. They were everywhere, in every restaurant. Kids could buy cigarettes back then. They didn't stop advertising on TV until 1972 I think. This brings back memories of sneaking my dad's cigs and smoking in the bathroom. MY parents thought I was a very clean kid.

@katielass: Junior high kids would walk to the gas station a couple blocks away and buy cigarettes from a machine and condoms in the bathrooms...they said condoms were really profitable for the station, and they sold more in the women's bathroom than the men's. And they had a cigarette machine in the basement of the administration building at the university until some time in the mid-80's when they took them out, kids would come to the building and wait in the lounge and buy cigarettes till their parent got off work then....not many people hung around down there but it was a smoking lounge so a few took breaks.

@cherokeepatti: Jeez, into the 80's. That's almost shocking. I remember once probably in the mid 90's I was coming out of a store in a mall and I stopped to light my cigarette. There was a lady and little boy heading in and I heard the little boy say mommie look she's using drugs. Naturally I looked around and there was no one but me and I realized he was talking about me. And I thought good, get them when they're young and teach them how bad it is to smoke.

@katielass: the less they are around the smoke the better off too, my sister-in-law started smoking in her 30's because she was around her boyfriend (and others) who were heavy smokers...she started craving cigarettes when she wasn't around them.

@cherokeepatti: That's some second hand addiction there. wow, I'd never heard of that before.

@katielass: yeah it is...people who are working in casinos are getting sick from the second-hand smoke as well...

@cherokeepatti: Good point, I wonder when the class action lawsuit is coming.

@katielass: I don't know but the casinos have a way of driving off the workers before they are there for a decade....some have endured but I've been told they know their jobs aren't going to last and they take the money (card dealers make good money) and get training in something else if they are planning ahead.