Low-income smokers have a harder time quitting, which helps explain why Kentucky leads the nation in smoking
The numbers suggest one reason why Kentuckians lead the nation in smoking. Kentucky ranks 48th among the states and the District of Columbia in median household income in 2011-13, according to the Census Bureau; it ranked 45th in per-capita personal income in 2013, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
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| The pol’ls margin of error was plus or minus 1 percentage point. |
A 2008 Gallup poll of more than 75,000 Americans showed that the rate of smoking among people making less than $24,000 a year was more than double that of those making $90,000 or more. The higher the income category, the lower the smoking rate, except those making less than $6,000 per year, which was skewed because many in this bracket are students, Rob Goszkowski writes for Gallup.
Once health warnings about cigarettes became widely known, better-off Americans were more likely to quit smoking. “High-income families decreased their smoking by 62 percent from 1965 to 1999, versus only 9 percent for low-income families,” Humphreys reports. Education may also be a factor; income and education are usually closely related.
Humphreys list three reasons poorer smokers have a hard time quitting:
1. They inhale more deeply on each draw from a cigarette, creating stronger addiction and making it harder to quit.
2. They don’t have the same social support from their colleagues and friends as wealthier smokers. For example, a doctor is likely to be encouraged to quit smoking or get social disapproval if he or she is the last of their peers to stop; a person who works at roadside cleanup might “face precisely the reverse social incentives from his smoking coworkers,” Humphreys writes.
3. They are likely to have less access to effective smoking-cessation programs and less access to address behavioral health issues, like depression, that make quitting more difficult. Kentucky has addressed those problems recently by having Medicaid cover smoking cessation and behavioral-health care by any licensed provider.
Some suggest that because lower income smokers have a harder time quitting, using higher tobacco taxes as an incentive for them to quit should be re-evaluated. Humphreys writes, “Deeply addicted, low-income smokers may face the choice between spending much-needed income on tobacco or venturing into the black market for untaxed cigarettes, which carries significant risks of its own.”
Kentucky’s cigarette tax of 60 cents a pack is lower than all but 10 states. New York ranks first at $4.35 per pack, which pushes the price of cigarettes to $10-$15 a pack, according to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids website.