The Demographics of Tobacco
Tobacco has long been a product of the south and current numbers still represent the stereotype. The states with the hightest cigarette use in 2020 were West Virginia at 25.2%, Kentucky at 23.4% and Arkansas at 22.4%. Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee were other states among the highest percentage.
Mormon dominated Utah was the lowest with 9%. California was next to last at 11.2%, being a state that has had lots of government funded anti-tobacco effort since the late 1990s. In 2019, 14% of U.S. adults smoked cigarettes. That means an estimated 34.1 million adults in the U.S.A. use cigarettes. We are saying "adults", so these numbers do not include the many underage smokers.
In 2020, the to six producing tobacco states were all in the south. Those being, in order of the most tobacco produced: North Carolina, Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia and South Carolina. The only other state that produced any significant tobacco was Pennsylvania. Tobacco is grown in only fifty-one of four-hundred-thirty-five congressional districts but in twenty-seven of these districts tobacco is a huge money-maker with a big strain on local economies.
Cigarette smoking remains the leading cause of preventable disability and disease in the United States. It is also the United States leading cause of preventable death, accounting for more than 480,000 deaths every year. This adds up to cigarette smoking being responsible for one out of every five deaths in the U.S.
In 2002, The Organization For Tobacco-Free Kids found that tobacco-related Medicaid costs for all fifty states totaled more than $10.11 billion. The states also had an additional $2.2 billion for other smoking-related issues.
States with large populations and generous Medicaid benefits faced very steep expenses. New York had a bill of more than $2 billion. California paid $1.15 billion. Most states ranged from $40 million to hundreds of millions of dollars each year. And these numbers don't include the costs paid by private insurance companies.
As is the case with youth, most adult smokers are working-class people with little or no education. From an educational standpoint, the group with the highest percentage of smokers were those with a GED certificate at 35.3%. 21.6% of U.S. citizens with no high school school diploma smoke. 19.6% with only a high school diploma use cigarettes and 17.7% of people with some college credits but no college degree smoke. Only 6.9% of Americans with a bachelor's degree smoke cigarettes and 4% with a master's or doctorate degree smoke.
When most educated people quit tobacco in the late 1970s and 1980s, tobacco companies began marketing their products to working-class people, setting up billboards in their communities and advertising around grocery stores and convenience stores that were mostly inhabited by blue-collar citizens.