Smoking Proves Hard to Shake Among the Poor - NYTimes.com

Clay County, Kentucky has a smoking rate of 36.7%

Philip Morris perfected the technique of increasing nicotine release by adding ammonia, helping to secure Marlboro's dominant market position. Do they have a special responsibility to pepe in areas like rural Kentucky, a state where the tobacco industry figures large?  From a comparative fault point of view should working class people there be judged differently from college grads? - GWC

Smoking Proves Hard to Shake Among the Poor - NYTimes.com: 

by Sabrina Tavernese and Robert Gebeloff

Cigarettes were high-society symbols of elegance and class, puffed by doctors and movie stars. By the 1960s, smoking had exploded, helped by the distribution of cigarettes to soldiers in World War II. Half of all men and a third of women smoked.

But as evidence of smoking’s deadly consequences has accumulated, the broad patterns of use by class have shifted: Smoking, the leading cause of preventable death in the country, is now increasingly a habit of the poor and the working class.

While previous data established that pattern, a new analysis of federal smoking data released on Monday shows that the disparity is increasing. The national smoking rate has declined steadily, but there is a deep geographic divide. In the affluent suburbs of Washington, only about one in 10 people smoke, according to the analysis, by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. But in impoverished places like this — Clay County, in eastern Kentucky — nearly four in 10 do.

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