Over the last fifty years society has viewed Smoking under different lenses. What was once praised for its medicinal purposes, to being declared unsafe for consumption. Tobacco has been able to secure its longevity with its relationships to the people through its addictive components, major corporations who rely on them, and the social influence of the users. There was a period when society had been unaware of the unsafe factors that smoking caused. Until 1964 Luther L. Terry, M.D., Surgeon General of the United States, released Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee of the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service. Stating “excessive cigarette smoking causes lung cancer.”
Disrupting the social norm with this knowledge would spark the conflict of society in the years to come. FDA guidelines states the mandatory use of precautionary labels on cigarette packs. This would evolve to televised advertisements protesting the usage of e-cigarettes and vapes from groups like TobaccoFreeCa. The outcome of this information divided the people into those who engaged in the act and those who watched with heads held high. Tobacco’s functionalism on society was fueled by the belief of if medicinal powers, its acceptance in high class, and its value to the economy.
One point in time Tobacco became legal currency (Maryland and Virginia), men would use tobacco to purchase groceries, and even women. Farming of the crop and its distributions were identified as laborious, the demand for tobacco increased and so did labor production. This would result in an increase of slave trade with the idea of free labor for the crop cultivation* As decades pass Smoking has merged with the technological advances the 21st century has to offer.
Favoring the economic value smoking tobacco has on society, corporations continue to manufacture. In the decades that have passed the connotation surrounding smoking started from a class of high status to being demoted to “noncriminal deviant acts, as smoking…” Sociology Matters, by Richard T. Schaefer, McGraw-Hill Education, 2019.
Smoking’s symbolic interaction with society is observed to be much more than a simple addiction; it is a way to interact with other individuals in everyday life, which oversights the physical harmful effects. The engagement could be an act of defiance toward parents, the social pressure to “be accepted” within the smoking community, it may be used to meet new people, and it has been reported to “relive stress.”
