The Smoker as Other: How Stigma Creates a Class of People We're Allowed to Despise
Smokers are one of the last groups it's socially acceptable to openly despise. The stigmatization is justified by health concerns—and it functions as a mechanism of social exclusion that deepens the very inequalities the health concerns are supposed to address.
It's acceptable to say 'smokers are disgusting' in a way that it's not acceptable to say about any other health condition. The stigmatization is justified by the health consequences of smoking—and by the assumption that smoking is a choice. **The assumption is incomplete: smoking is concentrated among the poor, the mentally ill, and the traumatized—populations for whom 'choice' is constrained by circumstances. The stigma that is supposed to motivate quitting falls on the people least able to quit—and functions as a mechanism of social exclusion that deepens inequality.**
