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> Eg Americans today smoke a lot less tobacco and drink less coffee too. Education works! Are there any scientific facts which would back this? To me it feels

> Eg Americans today smoke a lot less tobacco and drink less coffee too. Education works! Are there any scientific facts which would back this? To me it feels like there have been several other causes to that which were much more relevant. Not allowing people to smoke inside, vaping and smoking getting "out of fashion" were much more successful. It's just not cool anymore and those who still want to smoke are being confined to disgusting places to do it. Soo...it kinda works against your argument because it was a bad example. The only thing we may take away from it would be that if we'd have made smoking tobacco illegal everywhere, it would have remained cool to do so secretly...maybe.

mytailorisrich 6y ago
It's not cool to smoke anymore because of all the aducation and PR campaigns. The decline started decades before vaping and bans on smoking inside. It started when the message changed. In the US "peak smoking" occurred in the 1960s and consumptions has been decreasing ever since [1] [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK294310/figure/ch2.f1/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK294310/figure/ch2.f1/
rsynnott 6y ago
Smoking was already generally in decline in most countries, including the US, who introduced public bans. It was a big part of what made the bans politically feasible in the first place.
DanBC 6y ago
The biggest driver of behaviour change is increasing the price. Cigarettes are considerably more expensive (even when adjusting for inflation) than they used to be. https://247wallst.com/special-report/2019/06/19/price-of-a-pack-of-cigarettes-through-the-decades/2/ https://247wallst.com/special-report/2019/06/19/price-of-a-p... Other things (bans on ads, bans on smoking in venues, health information) do help, but they're a smaller part of the picture.
- Krasnol 6y ago
  True. I did forget this up there.

mytailorisrich 6y ago

It's not cool to smoke anymore because of all the aducation and PR campaigns. The decline started decades before vaping and bans on smoking inside. It started when the message changed. In the US "peak smoking" occurred in the 1960s and consumptions has been decreasing ever since [1] [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK294310/figure/ch2.f1/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK294310/figure/ch2.f1/

rsynnott 6y ago

Smoking was already generally in decline in most countries, including the US, who introduced public bans. It was a big part of what made the bans politically feasible in the first place.

DanBC 6y ago

The biggest driver of behaviour change is increasing the price. Cigarettes are considerably more expensive (even when adjusting for inflation) than they used to be. https://247wallst.com/special-report/2019/06/19/price-of-a-pack-of-cigarettes-through-the-decades/2/ https://247wallst.com/special-report/2019/06/19/price-of-a-p... Other things (bans on ads, bans on smoking in venues, health information) do help, but they're a smaller part of the picture.

Krasnol 6y ago
True. I did forget this up there.