What makes people quit besides feeling shunned?
One is price sensitivity. It’s been clearly shown that raising the cost of cigarettes discourages people from starting. It makes them want to quit, and if they can’t quit they’ll smoke less. The second major influence is smoke-free buildings. If you’re working on the 30th floor of a building, and you have to go out for your smoke break, you have to get your coat and your purse, push the down button, then you’ve got to do all that again. You’re gone a long time. The economic pressures from the taxes, and the social pressure from the clean indoor air movement have contributed to the lower smoking rate. Smoking is less common, and that makes it more unacceptable. Are glamorous depictions of smoking in movies and ads counteracting the pariah effect? The rate of smoking has gone way down. It’s about 20 percent now. Why hasn’t the rate of smoking in movies gone down? There are different theories for that. One theory is that the tobacco industry has very cleverly manipulated the people in the
