Smoking what?: an ethnography of cigarette 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 the library and found three useful print sources. Chapter six of Smoke free Europe, "Creating a global tobacco culture among women," by Doctor Amanda Amos, "Tobacco as a gateway drug" produced by the Youth Media Network of California, and "Cigarettes as a gateway" by Ken Schroeder, were the only articles I could find in the library so I needed to explore other sources. I continued by surfing the World Wide Web to find more information. Two websites, www.ymn.org, .
Smoking 2 .
Youth Media Network, and www.drugs.indiana.edu, Indiana's Prevention Resource Center, proved to be very helpful. Then, I did 5 interviews of smokers outside of my dorm, Burnside Hall, here at University of Rhode Island.