Yeah, I may be over interpreting the stats. I was trying to see if there was some correlation between social strife and smoking rates (“it bumps up again in the late 80’s. The ‘87 stock market crash, perhaps?”), but that thesis falls apart when you look at the late 90’s. It was a time of relative prosperity, but rates were climbing back up.
So, you’re right that it’s probably just normal variation.
Other than happiness.
I can’t disagree with that in my experience
While smoking rates decline (typically in Western countries), enough smokers are being recruited in Asia and Africa to pick up the slack, leading to forecasts of a modest (2.4%) CAGR (compound annual growth rate) in tobacco product sales through 2030.
The real growth industry is e-cigarettes/vaping, with an annual growth rate forecast to be 30% over the same time period.
There’s still a lot of money to be made by hooking new consumers on nicotine. Canny investors will take notice.
Twenty somethings are vaping nicotine and an alarming rate based on my observations. The perception, which might be correct, is that it’s much less harmful than smoking traditional cigarettes.
One thing is pretty clear from the chart @kenobi_65 provided: there is no obvious blip in the statistics in 1964 when the Surgeon General’s report came out, nor in the immediately following years when various public health / propaganda measures were taken to popularize the findings.
So the narrow interpretation of the OP’s premise is debunked. 1964 is not and never was a watershed event for US smoking rates.
We’ve been slowly sanding this down for 70 years now and are probably not too far from as low as it will go. The percentage of US folks of any age still smoking today with all the knowledge, expense, and social obstacles in their way represents some kind of hard core or hard floor: the percentage of people who are supremely addictable to nicotine and just need 1 or two hits to become lifers.
It’s probably unrealistic to expect an immediate marked drop to have occurred in smoking rates as a result of the SG’s report. Arguably, it did set in motion a process whereby smoking went from being the norm to a negatively viewed habit practiced by a shrinking minority.
I suppose. I was a kid when that happened and as best I can recall the general grown-up response was “No shit, Sherlock. Honey, pass me the cig lighter.” Aided and abetted of course by the massive disinformation campaign that’s still going on.
Very likely. But it is as addictive. However vaping (and patches, and gum. and snuff, etc) are all reasons why a Ban on smoking could work, unlike prohibition.
I read that a lot of people who supported Prohibition didn’t think it would ban beer, just “the hard stuff”, so my WAG is that if it had not banned beer and wine, Prohibition might have been a success.
Just like the War on drugs might be winnable if we excluded marijuana.
People need something to turn to. My dad easily stopped smoking cigs when he switched to a pipe, then got down to two pipefuls a day.
They can be switched to vaping.
Look, around 40.000 Americans (it has gone down a bit, used to be 50K) die from second hand smoke. A switch to vaping for that die hard 10% will at least get rid of that 40K- mostly kids and seniors.
I agree it’d be nice if we reduced the number of smokers a lot closer to zero. Both for them, and for those around them.
And I sorta-believe that vaping really does represent harm reduction for current smokers who choose to adopt it. I’d believe it a lot more if the FDA could regulate the contents of vape liquid like they do the contents of aspirin, not like they can’t regulate the contents of e.g. wheat grass supplement capsules.
The problem I see most with “harm reduction” is the problem of turning, e.g. 100K smokers into 300K vapers when another 200K non-partakers take up the now not-so-much-pariah habit. Those are the folks who lose in this “substitution” program.
For what it’s worth – and this is an anecdote, but my friend just told me about this a few days ago, so it’s fresh in my mind:
My friend used to smoke cigarettes; she switched to vaping a few years ago. Her mother is currently fighting lung cancer. Her mother’s oncologist, upon learning, from the mother, that my friend vapes, actually said, “I’d rather see your daughter smoking cigarettes than vaping.” (He’s apparently concerned about the variable quality of vaping fluids, as well as the perception that it’s “safe.”)
That’s certainly my take. Not that I have any data to back it up.
Let’s discuss this again: “You take completely unregulated chemicals, including complex chemicals known to cause disease, that are manufactured in China by gosh knows who bought and sold through gosh knows how many middlemen, then you heat these up to a high temperature, triggering gosh knows what sorts of chemical processes, then you deliberately coat your lungs with the products and byproducts. Several times per day for years?” Yeah, right. You do what you want, but count me out, OK friend?
Seems to me like a pretty simple soliloquy to follow.
The did regulate flavoring in vape carts.
I don’t know if the war had anything to do with smoking rates, but my son started smoking while he was in the army (2007 - 2011). He did it because his supervisor was driving him nuts and if you smoked you got more breaks.
That’s good to know. My one issue with marijuana legalization is that I was afraid that it would lead to an increase in cigarette smoking. The fact that it apparently hasn’t is very reassuring.
On the other hand, there’s some evidence that tobacco use (notably, e-cigarettes) is associated with later use of marijuana.
I’m pretty impressed by the cannabis subreddits and their feelings about tobacco and alcohol. The vast majority of g to be heavy cannabis users are steadfastly against tobacco use and to just a slightly lesser extent against alcohol use.