Liquor and Tobacco

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 21, 1873

Liquor and Tobacco.

It is no wonder that many people are poor, and always continue poor, when they lay out so much money on tobacco and liquors. The cost of them in the United States is enormous.

The New York Commercial Advertiser estimates that $250,000,000 was spent in this country last year for chewing tobacco, snuff, and cigars, while during the same period about $200,000,000 was spent for flour. Dr. Edward Young, chief of the Bureau of Statistics, ascertains from official data that, during the year ending June 30th, 1870, our countrymen consumed liquors costing about $600,000,000. It thus appears that we spend more than four times as much for tobacco and strong drink as we do for bread. There is no doubt that the poor take a proportionate share in these extravagant and unnecessary, if not actually baneful, indulgences. Does not that fact, then, help to explain the pecuniary embarrassments with which some of them are continually struggling?