Smoking and Cultural Shame?
I was born in 1980 in the US and grew up in middle/upper middle class educated areas. As such, I was obviously inundated with health messages about how smoking was the worst thing you could do for your body.
Beyond that though, smoking was seen as a complete degenerate, loser activity. You'd kind of associate it with people from the absolute dregs of society. Like someone who smoked probably had a crack addiction and liked tuning up their wife on a Saturday night.
I think mostly based on this cultural view of smoking (more so than health), it really went out favor in the US and you see very few smokers now.
What happened in Portugal and much of Europe in general? Did they not get similar messaging in the 80s and 90s? How are there so many more smokers here? Is it not seen as much of a loser activity among middle class and above people?