Smoking Cigarettes (My Circumstances Made Me Do It)
Rates of cigarette smoking have dropped substantially in the US over the past few decades. But lots of Americans still smoke, and the burden of tobacco-related illness does not fall evenly across our population. That is tragic under normal circumstances, with tobacco use leading to heart attacks, strokes, cancers, and emphysema, to name but a few relevant illnesses. In the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s even more tragic, because tobacco smoking significantly increases the lethality of the virus.
So why isn’t tobacco use evenly spread across the population? In part, it’s because the more challenges a person faces in life, the more likely they are to smoke.
To read the rest of this piece, please visits my column on Forbes.