![[OC] Cigarette smoking rates by US state (2022)](https://www.byteseu.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/pl39xcetvrwf1-1536x954.png "[OC] Cigarette smoking rates by US state (2022)")
blog post with code to create this using geopandas and matplotlib: https://aaronjbecker.com/posts/matplotlib-choropleth-mapping-smoking-rates/
2022 was the last year in which all states had sufficient data; conducting interviews by phone is getting harder, attitudes towards the CDC notwithstanding.
Posted by aar0nbecker
34 Comments
Data source: American Lung Association [https://www.lung.org/research/trends-in-lung-disease/tobacco-trends-brief/data-tables/ad-cig-smoking-state](https://www.lung.org/research/trends-in-lung-disease/tobacco-trends-brief/data-tables/ad-cig-smoking-state)
Tools: python, Jupyter, pandas, matplotlib, geopandas.
Full reproduction code: [https://aaronjbecker.com/posts/matplotlib-choropleth-mapping-smoking-rates/](https://aaronjbecker.com/posts/matplotlib-choropleth-mapping-smoking-rates/)
Inspired by my father-in-law, who quit last month after 60 years of smoking!
Any formatting advice is greatly appreciated– are the labels too busy? should I use discrete colors? is the color bar size/placement OK?
The numbers are faaar more similar then I assumed they’d be.
oof the smoker’s teeth colors
WV got that coalness as well.
No need to smoke cigs in UT when you can get all those carcinogens from the valley smog anyway.
Ahhh I remembered cigarettes exist again, now I have desire
Excellent pallete, great formating, and great presentation of data.
This is about a third of the rate 50 years ago.
People still smoke cigarettes!!??
Why does the scale start at 8% and stop at 20% when the actual data is between 6.7% (UT) and 21% (WV) ?
The more I see these state scale maps the more I see the future is in Utah
What’s happening in West Virginia?
California needs to get that number down further. It’s lovely not encountering any smokers here and it’s incredibly unpleasant every time I do.
Americans need to start bragging to Europeans about how little we smoke.
Mormons see a pack of cigs and be like 🙅♂️🙅♀️
Utah only because of the Mormon influence on the state.
How is anyone alive in West Virginia lol. Seriously, map after map…
Happy to be last in this metric.
Gotta be honest I expected Washington’s number to be higher than Texas. Lived in Seattle for seven years and it was like going back in time to the 90s where there were smokers everywhere. Just without the smoking sections in restaurants and bars.
And 90% of the time education is a factor as is political affiliation and firearm ownership. I’ll let you figure out how this might play out.
I would’ve thought Kentucky and Virginia were higher.
I’d like to see one that also included tobacco vapes, or maybe cigarettes vs tobacco vapes.
I would say no one is smoking, moved from Europe to US and one of the first things I noticed was that no one smokes, you could spot 10 crackheads faster than a smoker.
I don’t personally know anyone who is smoking so I quit because I had no companion for the cig.
Goddam. Some parts of this country really do need to be…a different country.
Is there similar data for Europe? Would love to see a health statistic that the US actually excels in.
Here’s a sentence I’ve never said before but here goes:
Good job, Utah.
Broken cults are right twice a day
Feel like having one cigarette a month doesn’t really make you a smoker….I’m in my 30s. Say I bum a smoke when I go out to bar once a month since I turned 21. That’s over 100 cigs in lifetime… but not really a smoker. I wonder if atleast qualifying those who have bought and smoked a pack of cigarettes in the the last 30 days and more than 100 cigarettes in the last 6 months. Wonder how much that would change the data
I love that so many of these graphs posted in the last month or two show good things about Utah.
Gotta say, pretty impressed that tobacco country is so low/average (Virginia, Carolinas)
What is going on with West Virginia?
I’m pretty surprised more people smoke cigarettes in VT than NH to be honest. Or Texas or Florida.
Wahoo I’m one of 6.7% yeah fuck you…. dammit…. this isn’t one you wanna be in is it…..
Isn’t 100 cigs just like, 10 or so packs?