Nearly half of Americans smoked cigarettes around the time I was born. The prevalence of smoking in the mid-1960s was 42%. I recall there were always ashtrays in every public space. There were few if any no smoking signs. Indeed, cigarettes were sold in vending machines. All cars had ash trays and a cigarette lighter built-in. Many cars still have ashtrays and lighters but nowadays the ashtray is used for spare change, and the lighter is for auxiliary power to charge our phones.
In my lifetime smoking has gone from something widely accepted and even cool to a lower status habit. According to the CDC, recognizing smoking as a health hazard and getting Americans to quit or cut back is one of the greatest public health achievements of the 20th Century. A recent survey found smoking is something that only about 9% of Americans enjoy. That is the lowest on record. The following is from ABC News:
The cigarette smoking rate among US adults dropped to another all-time low last year, with 1 in 11 adults saying they were current smokers, according to government survey data released this week.
Cigarette smoking is a risk factor for lung cancer, heart disease, and stroke, and it’s long been considered the leading cause of preventable death.
The rate has been gradually dropping for decades, due to cigarette taxes, tobacco product price hikes, smoking bans, public education campaigns, and changes in the social acceptability of lighting up in public.
Smoking has experienced a slow but steady decline over the past 50 years. When I went to work in an office in the mid-1980s I worked in a hospital. People smoked inside, including both employees and the public. A couple of years later the hospital decided to ban smoking everywhere except private offices. We speculated it was because executives who smoked had private offices. Within six months all smoking was banned inside buildings. About a decade later, restaurants were forced to ban smoking inside. Cigarettes used to be a type of currency in prisons but smoking in prison was banned years ago.
It is curious then that public health advocates are noticing an uptick in smoking among Gen Z 20-somethings.
A heady combination of nostalgia, soft nihilism, and social media has Gen Z reconsidering lighting up. Although FDA surveys confirm smoking rates have sharply dropped from their mid-century heyday, you don’t have to look far to find a headline hand-wringing over the fact that “Gen Z is trying to make cigarettes cool again.” Unlike their grandparents, they understand the adverse health impacts — lung cancer, heart disease, death. They just don’t care.
While smoking has fallen, there are other ways to administer nicotine. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) bowed under pressure and approved the sale of fruit flavored nicotine vapes. What was probably the last straw for FDA commissioner, Marty Makary, was his opposition to fruit flavored vaping when Trump wanted it for powerful donors. In the past fruit flavored e-cigarettes were considered gateway products to entice younger people to vape. That is probably true. While vaping is less harmful than tobacco cigarettes, medical experts say it still is not safe. Furthermore, e-cigarettes are just as addictive as tobacco ones. About a dozen years ago the FDA tried to ban many vaping products but finally had to relent since many people used vaping as a smoking cessation tool. By some accounts vaping has really taken off among America’s youth. While CDC data found only 9% of Americans smoke cigarettes, the same survey found about 7% use vaping products.
Read more at ABC News: US adult cigarette smoking rate hits another all-time low
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