Hey, clean-living fans, good news. Hoosiers are cutting down on their vices. Revenues have been dropping at casinos:
Casino executives blame the downturn on the recession leading to fewer players at the slot machines and table games.
And the number of smokers has reached a historic low:
Sneegas said the new 2010 Indiana smoking rate validates the hard work underway in Hoosier committees to end tobacco use.
It's interesting that the stories about gaming attirbute the drop to the economy but the ones about smoking don't say anything about the costs. But isn't it logical to assume that both vice reductions are at least partly the result of people trying to make better use of limited resources in tough times? This seems especially so for tobacco, given that the costs have risen to the point where a pack of cigarettes cost nearly the same as two gallons of gas. Better living through poverty!
Gas prices, at least, are one silver lining in our dark economic cloud; as our demand for oil goes down, the price of gas does, too. All those places we can afford to do anything at we can get to a lot cheaper!
