Ex-Smokers (Not Non-Smokers) as Today's Role Models

The anti-smoking movement has given high purpose to many people’s lives during the past decade. What it hasn’t done is significantly reduce the proportion of Americans who smoke. A new Gallup poll finds 24 percent of adults smoked in the week prior to being questioned—down a bit from 2001 (28 percent), up a shade from 1999 (23 percent) and marginally lower than the number saying so in 1990 (27 percent). One might have expected the incidence of smoking to drop significantly during those years in the absence of anti-tobacco exertions, merely because the population was skewing older.