Smoking Proves Hard to Shake Among the Poor

Joanna Weill 3/27/144:00 AM

MANCHESTER, Ky. — When smoking first swept the United States in the early decades of the 20th century, it took hold among the well-to-do. Cigarettes were high-society symbols of elegance and class, puffed by doctors and movie stars. By the 1960s, smoking had exploded, helped by the distribution of cigarettes to soldiers in World War II. Half of all men and a third of women smoked.

But as evidence of smoking’s deadly consequences has accumulated, the broad patterns of use by class have shifted: Smoking, the leading cause of preventable death in the country, is now increasingly a habit of the poor and the working class.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/25/health/smoking-stays-stubbornly-high-among-the-poor.html

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Jane StevensPublisher, ACEsTooHigh; founder, PACEs Connection

Unfortunately, there's no mention in this story about why people smoke, especially what it does for them physiologically (e.g., reducing anxiety). This is a good example of why journalists would do more thorough reporting on issues of smoking, obesity, substance abuse, alcoholism, workaholism, etc., if they knew about the epidemiology of adverse childhood experiences, and the neurobiological, biomedical and epigenetics effects of toxic stress caused by childhood trauma.

3/27/149:51 AM

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