Report Outline
Special Focus
Introduction
Mark Twain is said to have quipped that quitting smoking was easy—he'd done it dozens of times. Little wonder: Nicotine is an addictive drug, and some say quitting tobacco is harder than quitting heroin. So millions of people keep lighting up. But as dangerous as smoking is known to be, and as antisocial as it has become, who would start smoking in the first place these days? The answer is teenagers—for the most part, certain, identifiable teenagers—and the reasons they start are intertwined with all the growing pains of adolescence.
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Overview
The combination of government health warnings against smoking and social contempt for the habit has had a dramatic effect on American society: If smoking once was considered glamorous, today it is seen as “deviant behavior.” “Smoking,” says University of Connecticut sociologist Barry M. Glassner, “signifies bad morality, not just a health danger,”
Indeed, nearly half of all living adults who ever smoked have quit. In 1964, the year of the surgeon general's first health warning against smoking, at least half of American men smoked. Today, fewer than a third do. The prevalence of smoking among adults of both sexes dropped from 40 percent in 1965 to 29 percent in 1987. |
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| Smoking and the Tobacco Industry |
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May 10, 2019 |
E-Cigarette Dilemma |
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Sep. 19, 2014 |
E-Cigarettes |
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Dec. 10, 2004 |
Tobacco Industry  |
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Nov. 12, 1999 |
Closing In on Tobacco |
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Dec. 01, 1995 |
Teens and Tobacco |
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Sep. 30, 1994 |
Regulating Tobacco |
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Dec. 04, 1992 |
Crackdown on Smoking |
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Sep. 21, 1990 |
Tobacco Industry: on the Defensive, but Still Strong |
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Mar. 24, 1989 |
Who Smokes, Who Starts—and Why |
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Oct. 05, 1984 |
Tobacco Under Siege |
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Jan. 21, 1977 |
Anti-Smoking Campaign |
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Nov. 24, 1967 |
Regulation of the Cigarette Industry |
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Nov. 14, 1962 |
Smoking and Health |
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