After the Smoke Has Cleared: Reflections from a Former Smoker and Tobacco Researcher

Abstract

I grew up in a home where both parents smoked and I had my first cigarette at about age 13. I became a regular smoker sometime in my late teens, and at age 27 began working towards a doctoral degree in public health sciences on the topic of young women and smoking. As an active smoker entering into academic tobacco research circles, I felt very much like a stigmatized outsider and the antismoking sentiments of tobacco researchers and health advocates often felt to me like exclusionary “antismoker” views. In the tradition of autoethnographic writing, in this reflective piece I narrate my experiences as a smoker and my process of quitting in an effort to be critical and reflexive about my research, and also about the absence of the perspectives and active contributions of people who smoke to tobacco control research, programming, and practice.