US cigarette consumption

Two things Americans were giving up at roughly the same time. Cigarettes leaving the pocket, drinks leaving the steering wheel, both falling year on year for over a decade. A rare, quiet bit of national progress.

US cigarette consumption fell by roughly a third between 2002 and 2015 thanks to taxation, smoking bans, and a long generational shift. Alcohol-impaired driving fatalities declined over the same period as DUI enforcement intensified, ride-sharing arrived (Uber launched in 2009), and ignition-interlock laws expanded across states. Two public-health curves moving in the same direction for genuinely related reasons: cultural drift away from older vices, plus targeted regulation. The 2000s and early 2010s were a productive era for measured behaviour change.

Sometimes correlations point at real progress. The country quietly stopped doing two dangerous things at once.