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Reader question: Please explain this paragraph, “the tipping point” in particular: Last year marked the tipping point in the fight against tobacco addiction according to Free & Clear, a national leader in coaching-based tobacco dependence treatment. The United States now has more former smokers than current smokers. Further, over half of Americans now live in a city or state that is smoke-free. My comments: For the first time in history, more people are now quitting smoking than they are smoking tobacco. The turning point came last year. Before last year, even though more and more people had been joining the quitting game thanks to efforts such as coaching-based tobacco dependence treatment, the number of people quitting had never reached half of the smoking population. Now, that half-way point is reached. And that half-way point is the tipping point here. In other words, it’s the turning point. To tip, you see, is for something to turn over or fall. For example, if all people on a boat converge on one side of the ship, it’ll tip and fall over because the balance of ship is tipped. Yeah, it’s the same way you tip the scales. When the scale is perfectly balanced, any little weight you put on either side will tip the scale in its direction. And the tipping point is where this shift happens. This phrase often describes situations where small problems keep accumulating till one day they begin to cause great damages, if, that is, people don’t start dealing with them properly. People talk of the last straw breaks the camels back and that last straw, in a way, is the tipping point. | 
