Smoking rates have plummeted in recent decades thanks to mass media campaigns, cigarette taxes and public bans, yet nearly 38 million Americans still light up regularly.
The divide between who puffs and who passes on traditional tobacco cigarettes today is largely drawn by often overlapping factors such as income, education and geography. Disparities in these areas are stark, and are key to whether and how smokers try to quit the country’s leading cause of preventable disease and death.
