The end of smoking?

How many people smoke today?
In the U.S., just 17.8 percent of the population smokes — a record low, and down from a peak of more than 50 percent in the 1950s. Punishing taxes, indoor-smoking bans, and gruesome ad campaigns have compelled smokers to quit at such a rate that Citigroup analysts predict their numbers could drop to nearly zero by 2050. This decline is largely the result of a remarkable change in public perception of smoking, which the tobacco industry had successfully portrayed as cool and rebellious — a mark of sophistication and maturity. Now smokers are largely pariahs, and smoking is widely seen as a dangerous, dirty, and disgusting habit. Fifty years ago, “everyone around me smoked,” says photo developer Barry Blackwell, 60. “Everyone.” Now, looking down on smokers is “one of the few socially acceptable prejudices left.”

Why have smoking rates dropped so dramatically?
Fewer teens are starting to smoke in the first place, which helps. But a wave of state and city smoking bans for indoor spaces, including offices, restaurants, and bars, have also made it increasingly inconvenient for existing smokers to light up outside the home. In the aftermath of those bans, a 2012 study showed, hospitalizations for heart attacks and strokes fell at least 15 percent. The public-smoking bans did not merely force smokers to light up at home, as many health officials first feared, but have actually encouraged large numbers to kick the habit entirely. The percentage of smoke-free homes in Minnesota, following bans on restaurant, bar, and workplace smoking, for example, grew from 64.5 percent in 1999 to 87.2 percent in 2010.