Quitting smoking, I learned at too young an age, is an extremely difficult process. Until from atop his horse a cowboy cousin of mine in eastern Montana extended a tin of dip and I never lit another cigarette again.
It took decades before a doctor and dentist convinced me to stop chewing.
I was so hooked that as a young White House correspondent I dipped my way through the West Wing, provoking gasps from everyone but White House Chief of Staff (and later Treasury secretary) James A. Baker III.
Baker, now 96, was infamous in the executive mansion for plopping his cowboy boots onto freshly polished tables and biting plugs of Red Man.
I bring this up as a former newspaper colleague of mine, who now represents the health industry, forwards some recent tobacco-use figures for Montana.
“The Native American stat is insane,” she points out, noting while cigarette smoking in Montana is at an all time low of 12 percent—just over 100,000 adults—“that number surges to 32 percent among American Indian populations throughout the state.”
As it is, one quarter of all Montana adults—232,500—report using at least one tobacco product, a quarter of them resorting to two or more products: combustibles like cigarettes, cigars and pipes; smokeless offerings including chewing tobacco, dip and snuff; and heated/vaporized deliverables like the increasingly popular electronic cigarettes and water pipes.
Apart from the 12 percent who smoke (notably down from 19 percent in 2015) some 10 percent of Montana adults (twice as many as 10 years ago) use e-cigarettes, the nicotine chemically extracted from tobacco plants. Another 7 percent prefer the juice of nicotine pouches (the FDA just this week allowed 20 Phillip Morris-owned pouch products to carry a “modified-risk claim” when compared to smoking-related diseases), while 6 percent pinch or chew smokeless tobacco.
Not included in these figures, of course, are this state’s teenagers aged 17 and under, who for what it’s worth chew twice the amount of tobacco as their peers outside Montana. On a brighter note, Montana teens today smoke far fewer cigarettes than their parents and grandparents.
Virtually every black and white photograph I possess of my late grandfather, who made the rounds as chief deputy of the Flathead County Sheriff’s Office, shows a smoldering cigarette dangling from his lips.
In fact, when he died in 1966 at age 62, a staggering 43 percent of American men and women in this country smoked cigarettes. Today, the number is only 9 percent, a colossal plunge of 75 percent.
Meanwhile, as was my case, it’s not uncommon to substitute one bad habit, or vice, for another. And with adult-use cannabis sales skyrocketing in Montana, it wouldn’t at all be surprising if some smokers have traded cigarettes for this state’s highly potent pot.
But as one who wrote a book on marijuana, don’t be fooled.
Perhaps worse than the high THC concentrations this state’s leaders are peddling to the public is marijuana’s cancer-causing smoke. If you weren’t aware, the smoke inhaled from weed contains the same cancer-causing chemicals—there’s over 30 known carcinogens in marijuana—as tobacco.
For now, Helena has chosen to look the other way. Which isn’t surprising.
In the few short years since January 2022, when Helena lawmakers launched the legal sale of the mind-altering drug, the Montana Department of Revenue has collected a whopping $241 million in state marijuana tax revenues.
And as for total cannabis sales in Montana? $1.5 billion through May 2026.
No better time for Montana’s legislators and constituents alike to recall the sound counsel of our Founding Father Benjamin Franklin: “It is easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.”
John McCaslin is a longtime journalist and author who lives in Bigfork.