Smokers + Voters: A surprising link

September 10, 2024

The first and possibly only debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris takes place tonight.

In that way, tonight's faceoff in Philadelphia is like the Super Bowl for politics junkies and nerds. So we understand many of you are likely busily preparing your watch-night parties, picking up suds and spirits for the inevitable rounds of debate bingo and drinking games (including ours) and prepping munchies.

So we won't hold ya.

This week, we're talking about smoking and the relationship between puffing and passing — on voting.

We also have the season finale of Reckon True Stories. This show was so good, you might crave a cigarette after every episode.

Let's talk about it.

Teen vaping plummets to 10-year low

Fewer adolescents are vaping this year than at any point in the last decade, pointing to a shrinking number of high school students who are using Elf Bar and other fruity, unauthorized e-cigarettes, the Associated Press reported this week.

The latest survey numbers show the teen vaping rate fell to under 6% this year, down from 7.7% in 2023. More than 1.6 million students reported vaping in the previous month — about one-third the number in 2019, when underage vaping peaked with the use of discrete, high-nicotine e-cigarettes like Juul.

This year’s decline was mainly driven by a half-million fewer high school students who reported using e-cigarettes in the past month, officials said. Vaping was unchanged among middle schoolers, but remains less common in that group, at 3.5% of students.

“This is a monumental public health win,” FDA’s tobacco director Brian King told reporters. “But we can’t rest on our laurels. There’s clearly more work to do to further reduce youth use.”

Officials from the FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention attributed the big drop in vaping to recent age restrictions and more aggressive enforcement against retailers and manufacturers, including Chinese vaping companies who have sold their e-cigarettes illegally in the U.S. for years.

Data points were made

There's some evidence that smoking and nicotine consumption is correlated to voting behavior.

A 2016 study published by the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco looked at voters in Colorado, a swing state, in the 2004 presidential election and "found that individuals who smoke daily were less than half as likely as nonsmokers to report voting" in that matchup between incumbent George W. Bush and U.S. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.

"This suggests a significant negative association between daily smoking and electoral participation, potentially reflecting a lack of trust in political institutions or civic engagement among smokers," authors wrote.

"The finding implies that smoking, a health-risk behavior, may be linked to lower levels of political participation, highlighting an area for future research and potential public health initiatives that could combine smoking cessation efforts with civic engagement activities."

Here's more data on smokers from the National Youth Tobacco Survey and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

—In 2024, 5.9% of U.S. middle and high school students used e-cigarettes, down from 7.7% in 2023 (NYTS)

—Among e-cigarette users, 38.4% used frequently; 26.3% used daily (NYTS)

—The survey found the most commonly used devices are disposables (55.6%) and flavored products (87.6%)

—1.8% of students used nicotine pouches in 2024, with 22.4% daily users; ZYN was the most popular brand (NYTS)

—Nationally, cigarette smoking causes over 480,000 deaths in the U.S. annually. In 2021, 11.5% of adults smoked, a decrease from 20.9% in 2005 (CDC)

—Smoking is higher among men (13.1%) than women (10.1%). It's most common in adults aged 45–64 (14.9%) and least common in those aged 18-24 (5.3%), according to the CDC

—Higher rates of smoking are seen among those with lower education (30.7% for those with a GED) and lower income (18.3% for low-income adults)

—The region with the highest percentage of smokers is the Midwest (14.0%)

The art of comedy writing

First the Fat Boys break up, then we lose James Earl Jones, and now this: The season finale of Reckon True Stories is here.

But this is not a sad occasion. In fact, quite this opposite. In this podcast where we show our love through the gifting of expensive lipstick, Deesha and Kiese chat with the hilarious and multitalented Samantha Irby, author of multiple wickedly funny essay collections, as well as a writer for multiple television series.

On a personal note, working with Deesha, Kiese and Mark Armstrong at Ursa Story Co. has been one of the highlights of my time at Reckon. Such pros. So brilliant. Props to them, Dawnie and the Ursa crew. On our team, Michelle, Abbey, Sid and Katie. Y'all are the dopest!

Special thanks to John Hammontree for his support in making it happen.

Please rate, review and share the episode on Apple podcasts, Spotify and more.

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