Age and Pipe Smoking, 1999 – 2010
-
Kevin Godbee - Jan 9, 2013
- 3 min read
Dr. Michael Garr, Ph. D. aka "Doc Garr"
A frequently asked question among pipe smokers is whether pipe smoking among college-aged people is on the increase. Much of the information to answer the question is anecdotal. Nor has anyone to my knowledge looked at the ages of pipe smokers over a number of years.
Using the National Survey of Drug Use and Heath (NSDUH), formerly the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, the total number of pipe smokers and their ages can be fairly accurately estimated. The NSDUH is conducted under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Before 1999 the survey only looked at cigarette use. Starting in 1999, the survey was expanded to include a wide variety of tobacco use, including pipe use. The most recent year I had access to was 2010 and so the results presented below range from 1999 to 2010.
The sample, which ranges from approximately 53,000 to 58,000 respondents, is quite a large sampling. Sampling is done to ensure that the sample is representative of the entire nation.
I will show two charts. One shows the percentage of pipe smokers within each age category relative to the total sample of each age category. The second chart isolates just pipe smokers and shows the distribution of pipe smokers across the five age categories (12 – 17, 18 – 25, 26 – 34, 35 – 49 and 50 or older). The categories that are used are developed by NSDUH and are not my categories. Finally pipe smoking is confined to those who smoked tobacco in a pipe in the past month. Data can be obtained for last year or ever smoked a pipe, but using past month tends to focus on current smokers.
Chart 1 looks at the people who smoked a pipe in the past month as a percentage of the total sample for each of the age categories. Since 2003 there has been a fairly steady increase of people ages 18 – 25 who have smoked a pipe in the past month. In fact, pipe smoking in this age group increased to 1.8% from 1.3% during the 1999 to 2012 period. That is almost a 40% (38.5%) increase. During the same period, those between 12 to17 years of age basically remained unchanged. Every other age group saw declines in the percentage of pipe smokers (a 11.1% drop for those 26 to 34, a 40% drop for those 35 to 50, and a 41.7% drop for those 50 and older). It is surprising to see the dramatic drop for 50 or older group. Clearly, these findings suggest a fairly significant absolute increase among college-aged pipe smokers, ages 18 to 25.
Chart 2 examines the age distribution just among pipe smokers. Like Chart 1, this chart shows the increase of pipe smokers among the 18 to 25 age group relative to all other age groups, All other age groups show declines relative to the 18 to 25 age group. This again finds support for the increase of pipe smoking among those who are college-aged. . It is interesting to note, however, that regardless of year, more pipe smokers were college-aged than any other age group.
Overall, there has been a slight increase in pipe smokers over the period 1999 to 2010. In 1999, one percent of the population was pipe smokers. The percentage of pipe smokers decreased to 0.8% from 2002 – 2003. It increased slightly to 0.9% from 2003 to 2008. But then the percentage of pipe smokers jumped to 1.1% in 2009 and 2010. It is safe to say that this increase in the overall percentage of pipe smokers is due to the increase of pipe smoking among college-aged people.
Follow-Up Article: 2011 Youth Tobacco Survey
Another article by Doc Garr is: "The Ritual of Smoking a Pipe"
"Doc" is currently president of The United Pipe Clubs of America and Pocono Intermountain Pipe Enthusiasts. In 2011 Doc won the national slow-smoke championship in Chicago and competed in the World Cup in Eindhoven, Netherlands, where he came in 69th out of 338 smokers. He has been a pipe smoker for almost 25 years. When he is not smoking a pipe, Doc is Professor of Sociology at Wilkes University. He also moonlights at El Humidor, Wilkes-Barre, PA, a tobacco store. |
Written by Kevin Godbee
11 Responses
Smokingpipes.com Updates
2 Fresh Tine Balleby Pipes |
New Cigars |
24 Fresh Brulor Pipes |
3 Fresh Ser Jacopo Pipes |
12 Fresh Estate Pipes |
Recent Posts
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 636. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Barry Kane. Barry started smoking a pipe in 1961 when he was 14-years old. Back then it seemed like everybody smoked, and you could buy pipes and tobacco just about anywhere. Barry is a true old-school pipe smoker, sticking to just one blend. See if you can guess which one before listening. At the top of the show Brian will give his take on Scandinavian Tobacco Group’s purchase of Mac Baren and Sutliff Tobacco and their announcement that they will be shut down.
There’s a pipe in my collection that I cannot bring myself to smoke, though I’ve had it for more years than I care to recall. It’s old, or shall I say, well experienced; that experience, that oldness came to it long before it was in my possession. The pipe is an old Comoy’s Grand Slam from the 1940s. The shape (#93), a slightly canted, stack billiard (sometimes referred to as a Belgian) is right up my alley, and it’s a beautiful example of it. It came to me with some wear and tear; nothing unusual for an old pipe, but more the signs of one that has been well loved, smoked a lot, treated as a favorite tool, cherished, in a sense, by frequent use. It’s the pipe equivalent of a vintage car that’s been driven a lot, enjoyed fully and maintained adequately, rather than one kept in a spotless garage, dusted and detailed weekly, brought out only for leisurely Sunday drives, or to be ogled behind the ropes at the next Concours d’Elegance. When it arrived, those uncounted years ago, it wanted a little restoration. Nothing dramatic needed to be done to it, but the stem was oxidized, the finish a little dingy. The cake was even and fairly thin, and the airway was relatively clean, both signs that its previous owner cared for it, but the bowl’s surface was a little drab and dull. It took little effort to reveal its beauty, to show the lovely contrasted stain and interesting grain beneath the old wax. I often think I should do before and after photos of pipes that I work on, but those thoughts always come after the work’s been done. This one would have been a great illustration of how years of handling that can sometimes make a pipe more beautiful, can other times make it just look grungy. Once I’d cleaned up the externals, it was time to address the inside bits. I approach this a little bassackwards, I realize. It would be more sensible to take care of the inside before addressing the outside, but it’s how I roll. If an old pipe isn’t pretty to look at, it’s unlikely that I’ll care much about it, and cleaning is usually the hardest part, or at least the most boring part of any restoration for me. Alcohol and pipe cleaners. Lots of pipe cleaners. That’s why I leave it for last. Sometimes, I’ll even give a pipe a test smoke before a deep cleaning, just for a point of reference. I gave it a sniff to get an idea of what I was up against, and it stopped me cold. There in that bowl was an aroma that I had not smelled in decades. My head was instantly filled with memories of being in the back room of a fabled Berkeley tobacconist’s shop where I stumbled upon a few jars of long discontinued blends. One of them, a blend called Forty and Eight, had the most engaging and unusual scent of any tobacco I’d stuck my schnoz into. It was sweet, but not in a candy store way. There were none of the usual vanilla, cherry, berry or anise notes of typical aromatics, nothing that could be compared to aftershave or deodorant soap, but something almost musky, a little earthy, something exotic. The shop’s owner couldn’t tell me what was in it, how, or where it had been produced. The old blend had been retired before he’d bought the place. The printed catalogue gave no clues, either, other than being overprinted with the word “DISCONTINUED” in bold, rubber-stamp type. (And, I don’t recall it as being “highly aromatic” as the description indicates.) There was still quite a bit in the jar. Being, at that point, an intrepid explorer of all kinds of tobaccos, whether I thought I’d like them or not, I had to give it a try. It was burly based, but also comprised a good measure of virginia leaf, and maybe some other varieties; I didn’t have enough experience at the time to really pick it apart. But, that aroma was unlike anything I’d experienced before or since. It was something now completely lost to time. Until it wasn’t. Memories are powerful things, and there is no sense more tightly bound to memory than our sense of smell. One whiff was all it took to carry me back in time, conjuring a vivid recollection of something long submerged in the inky depths of a subconscious mind. Look, I know as well as anyone that pipes are meant to be smoked, and that many feel it almost sacrilegious to have a pipe and not set it to its intended task. In this case, I simply can’t. I won’t. Ever. Rationally, I am fairly certain this pipe would probably be a great smoke. It was too well loved by its previous caretaker to be anything less than that. My choice not to smoke it is an emotional one, not something rational. Of the thousands of pipes that have passed through my hands over the years, this is the only one to create such a singular and vivid, almost Proustian recollection of temps perdu, of lost time. It revivified a long dormant memory that is mine, and mine alone, and that’s enough. I keep it in a drawer with other old English pipes. In some ways, it’s nothing special, just a nice old pipe. I don’t lavish it with any particular care that arguably befits the hidden treasure that it holds. It’s not in a special box, or displayed preciously in a glass cabinet. Every once in a while, I take it out, point my nose bowlwards, and every time, those memories return just as powerfully as they did the first time. I have no idea how long it’s been since its last owner smoked it, but in the years I’ve had it, there seems to have been very little degradation of the aroma, and that’s […]
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 635. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with James Ravenwood. James is the boutique tobacco blender of Ravenwood Blends. His blending started out as a fun hobby, and he now has professionally packaged commercially available products with some great tin art. Part of his interest in pipe smoking goes back to fond memories of a retired Navy Veteran that lived on his street while he was growing up that would sit in his driveway smoking a pipe all day. Later, in 2011 he began smoking pipes and soon after started experimenting with mixing different tobaccos. His other hobby, that he has been doing for 30 years, is photography. He takes wonderful photos of outdoor spaces, and still life pictures of pipes and tobacco. You can see them on his Instagram @thebriarfellowship. At the top of the show we’ll have an Ask the Pipemaker segment with renowned pipe artisan Jeff Gracik.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 634! Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Warren Ertle. Warren is an extremely accomplished musician with a PhD in music. He started early as a percussionist in sixth grade. Later his grandmother got him a cheap Casio keyboard which he taught himself to play. He started playing in blues bands in high school, and has been a pianist with jazz big bands for years. Even though he was already a professional musician, he took his first real piano lesson when he enrolled in college with his studies in classical music. He is of course a pipe smoker. At the top of the show we will have an Ask the Tobacco Blender segment with Jeremy Reeves. Jeremy is the Head Blender at Cornell & Diehl, which is one of the most popular boutique pipe tobacco companies in the USA.
Soon now, supposedly, our neighborhoods will shift from grinning pumpkins, skeletons in various assortments, and zombies dashing about to pretty reindeer, angels, and flashing lights illuminating homes with sparkling stars and laughing, scurrying Santas. But, lest we forget, there is the turkey season, fancy pie aromas wafting from kitchens, and a national pardon of a big Tom Turkey. Remember, now, that only one of these holiday personalities is a pipe smoker. And that is the hefty, bearded fellow in a bright red suit sitting in a sleigh with a herd of deer hitched up and ready to streak across the globe, bringing tidings of joy and many presents. Ok, the scene is set for the next couple of months, right? So, before we get too far off the beaten path, let’s just take a deep breath of fresh autumn air, shall we? Ahh. That’s better, isn’t it? What’s got the Pundit in a snit is not all the Halloween spooks who came a-jostling for candy. Or the wild turkeys gobbling in the backwoods or all the fuss and feathers over the big one—Christmas. No, it is that we might need to take note of all the little things that mean so much to us. Like a good sunrise (seriously, Pundit has not gone all Pollyanna.) Mayhaps we need to appreciate more of what we have than what we have not. Or something like that. Like, a good pipe in the morning with coffee as the dawn brings us coolish weather now that we have flipped the calendar to autumn. But it also brings beautiful leaves that have become a spectacle of technicolor in the wind. It is the little things. The rereading of an enjoyable book and finding something you did not see or learn in the first go-round. Or a stunning phrase you commit to memory with the re-read, while smoking that favorite pipe. And you notice a superior puff that just seems to be different. It’s in the air and the seasons of meaningful little things. It’s aromatic! Or perhaps it is that sense of satisfaction knowing and appreciating you made it to another day. With the world in a kind of rinse-and-repeat history, reminiscent of a Shakespearean play, it is perhaps a good moment to remember some of Pipedom’s philosophers whose cogent thoughts brought light to clear a path in the mists of confusion and confounding opinions. Ok. No gloom and doom. Just some down-home thoughts. Think of times in the past when history was running off the rails. It took our pipe-smoking thinkers (the mind workers of the world) to speak of better pathways to more light. Think for a moment, with a pipe in hand, these wizards of the world and word: Albert Einstein, J. R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edwin Hubble, Bertrand Russell, C. S. Lewis, and Jean-Paul Sartre. All learned and enlightened. They offered wisdom instead of storms of meaningless roads to nowhere. All while smoking their pipes! Maybe especially with the help of their pipes in the art of thinking and philosophy. Recall the words of Mr. E=MC2 when he said, “I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs.” Amen and amen! Dealing with world-rattling events takes a calm and objective view of things, to the Pundit’s way of summing it up. You just don’t go messing around with quantum physics without a calm and objective approach, methinks. Or as the extraordinary physicist Robert Oppenheimer said after he and a team in the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos Labs developed a way to split atoms into bombs during World War II. “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” said Oppenheimer referring to the development of the first nuclear bombs dropped on Japan. It must be pointed out that Oppenheimer was more of a cigarette smoker than a pipe smoker. Nonetheless, pipes were part of his personality. Now, if you have read some of the great authors of the past and present, their pipes were always nearby. Reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle can be a three-pipe problem at times. S. Lewis and Jean-Paul Sartre require time with your pipes to reflect on the existential problems and solutions these authors provide in learned novels and other narratives. Or take Edwin Hubble and Bertrand Russell, philosophers of another world. Pipes are required for reading. The quantum lode of ideas Pundit is attempting to sort out is that our pipes are relaxing and stimulate our thoughts and creativity. Especially in these last months of the year. Many times Pundit has had that light bulb flick on while smoking my beloved pipes. And friends in Pipedom, it ain’t easy to turn on the lights in Pundit’s rock pit head. Now it’s time for a quote from a Pipe Smoker of the Past. Shelby Foote was born Nov. 17, 1916, in Greenville, Miss., and died June 27, 2005, in Memphis, Tenn. A fact is not a truth until you love it—Shelby Foote. A parting thought: It is said that famed Southern author William Faulkner carried a packed pipe in a coat pocket wherever he went. That’s one effective way to deal with workday conflicts and confusion. A calm and objective judgment in our everyday human affairs, as the quantum man said.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 633. Our featured guest tonight is Jon David Cole. JD is the Owner/Tobacconist at The Country Squire in Jackson, MS, and the accompanying online store. We’ll have JD and Brian talking about what’s new at the store and in the business in general. At the top of the show, Brian will discuss tobacco growing, what happens to the leaf, and provide updated information on where tobacco is being gown today. Tobacco production originated in the United States and we were once the #1 producer. It’s quite different now.
Look at all that red! Myself included at 24!
Very cool little study! I enjoy stuff like this.
I am not surprised that the majority of pipe smokers now is coming from the college aged group.
It is a surprise that the second largest group is 12-17! (if I’m reading correctly). I’d like to know how the data is collected (I assume the “head of the household” fills out the info)? That number (20% of pipe smokers!) seems unbelievable, although I do not question your method or analysis.
Even more interesting would be to do the math and calculate the absolute numbers from the study. The new Gandalf movies will provide a spike this year too.
hp
les
Yes, The Hobbit movies will certainly increase the interest in pipe smoking, Les.
Gray: This is a multi-staged probability-proportionate-to-size (PPS), starting off with a random sample of states. Within each state, there are regions that are sampled, within regions census tracts are sampled, and then finally household are sampled within census tracts. At the household level, household member is randomly selected with oversampling of 12-17 year olds resulting in a sample of 68,126. If you want more detail go to http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/nhsda/2k2nsduh/Results/appA.htm
“Lies, damned lies and statistics.” These numbers look entirely suspect and defy common sense. Doesn’t it strike you as odd or unbelievable that over 75% of all pipe smokers are between 12 and 25 years old? And of that group over 20% are 12-17? What self respecting teen smokes a pipe with tobacco in it? Not very damn many. Twelve year old pipe smokers? really? Whatever these 12-25 year olds are smoking in their pipes, I can assure you it is not pipe tobacco.
Before they outlawed tobacco shipments in my lunatic liberal state, the Washington State Department of Health tried to show us similar numbers of youthful pipe smokers. It was as ludicrous then as it is now. Its simply massaged data to justify progressive regulations and restrictions on all tobacco.
I thought the age distribution data from the PipesMagazine “Pipe Smoker Survey-2010” was more illuminating — even though some elderly and presumably less computer-literate smokers may have been systematically excluded. Kevin’s comment above, along with the concept of “youthful experimentation”, goes a long way toward explaining why the greatest increases of “in the past month” pipe smoking occurs among younger people.
.
This data may also be saying that, for whatever reason, non-pipe smokers who have attained the age of 26 are less likely to take up the pastime.
.
Regardless, it’s nice to have the stats as presented. Perhaps Doc Garr will offer a few hypotheses later.
This “children smoking pipes” idea really grates at my sense of honesty. Of course the occasional child experiments with pipe tobacco but these numbers are not credible in any way.
I am not a market researcher but methodology questions occur to me: if they interview head of households, what parent knows they’re children smoke a pipe unless they are hillbillies? And what child would admit to smoking a tobacco pipe?
I am delighted we get (adult) youthful pipe smokers in the hobby. How else would we carry on? But this studiy’s results and implications are preposterous. It has one sinister purpose: politics.
I think two issues are involved with why the age distribution turns out the way it does. First, whatever at-risk behavior you want to look at–drinking, using marijuana, driving fast–occurs most frequently in this age group. So often the issue is desistance when we become older. Second, young people have been looking for alternatives to cigarettes, whether it be pipes or hookah or snuff.
As for the credibility of the study, it is difficult to find a more credible study of drug use than the National Survey of Drug Use and Health. They do not interview the head of household. The handheld computer possessed by the interviewer randomly selects the member of the household to be interviewed, with overweighting for 12-17 year olds. Second, would you suggest Matt that all adolescents would lie about their pipe smoking? If not, then, what we have here is actually a conservative estimate. Finally, this is the study the CDC uses, and many other health agencies, in getting estimates of both legal and illegal drug use. You will find few critics of its methodology. I would recommend going to the website listed above and read more about the study and its methodology.
Doc, I’m simply saying this defies common sense and does not sound at all possible. If 20%+ of all kids smoke a tobacco pipe, why have we not seen it in any other cultural format? i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, any online forums. And if 56% of all young adults –including women–smoke a tobacco pipe, then why don’t we observe that anywhere?
This giant herd of young pipe smokers ought to be observed somewhere — if they exist. Do you see them on TV, the street corner, the shopping malls, news media, new media, movies, you tube videos, animation, advertising? Ad agencies are super quick to pick up on trends and use them. According to this study young pipe smoking has been trending for over 10 years! I don’t recall seeing any advertisement depicting kids smoking pipes — although smoking per se is taboo. I see young people smoking marijuana, but never tobacco pipes.
If young people and teens are smoking tobacco pipes it ought to appear someplace other than this study. But it doesn’t. So what on earth could the study methodology reveal to account for this fiction?
Ah, I see where you are coming from Matt. Don’t forget that the total rate of pipe smoking in the population is 0.9% So the percentages you see are for that percentage of pipe smokers. So if a quarter of pipe smokers are young adults then that makes up only a little over 0.2% of the total population. So the above stats are just for pipe smokers not the entire population. And don’t forget even Ellen Page smoked a pipe in Juno!