Since 1964, when the U.S. Surgeon General first reported that the risks from smoking could not be ignored, tobacco use in the United States has plummeted. More than 40 percent of Americans smoked cigarettes in 1965. Over the last half-century, that smoking rate has fallen by half.
And yet for some populations, the needle has barely moved. In fact, one of the U.S. demographics most burdened by tobacco’s wrath of illness and death are LGBT communities.