Smoke What?: An Ethnography Of Smokers

Popular belief states that North American Indians were the first people in the world to smoke varieties of Nicotiana for pleasure. Some of these Native American Indians claimed the growth and production of tobacco was delegated by holy spirits, and that the product, being sacred, was used as an offering. Today tobacco is viewed much differently; the majority of the populace views cigarette smoking or tobacco use as offensive and ignorant. In America, doctors have concluded that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer, heart attacks, and emphysema, which are responsible for over 40 million deaths per year. But what else does smoking cigarettes cause? Besides the physical affects are there behavioral affects of smoking cigarettes? Smokers make up a distinct culture, defined by their common behavior of smoking cigarettes, in American society. I am a smoker and I have noticed that most cigarette smokers seem to engage in recreational drug use while abusing multiple illegal drugs!

. I did research on this culture to investigate if cigarette smokers are also drug users.

I began my research by utilizing many different sources written or related to this topic. First, I went to t

Most cigarette-smoking individuals use illegal drugs at some point in their life. All of the studies that I found used students, usually of middle school and/or high school, age as their subjects. This may not seem like an accurate representation of the whole smoking population, but since I wanted to know about a drug-user subculture within the smoking culture, this was a good age for the doctors and other investigators involved to study. I think that most people begin to use drugs within this time period and it is also a time where it is a little more accepted to use drugs; teen years are sometimes labeled the years of “experimentation.” I think adults would more frequently be unreliable sources for these studies because they may be concerned with more serious repercussions related to their drug use because society looks down upon it more heavily than teenage usage due to the more responsibility that is expected of adults. It is hard to say whether smoking cigarettes causes people to use drugs or if the two actions are individual based on personal preference. However, there is a strong correlation between those who smoke cigarettes and those who use drugs. The U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse found that “95 percent of smoking seniors have tried illicit drugs.” (Tobacco i.e. 2000) That only leaves 5 percent of those who smoke that don’t use drugs. They also state “98 percent of the smokers studied started smoking before they ever used any illicit drugs.” My interviews also supported theory that there is a big subculture of drug users with in

cigarettes has in anyway influenced or progressed their used of these

Some topics in this essay:
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