/ North State Smoking Study /

This post is based on a narrative from the North State Smoking Study. Participant names are pseudonyms.

Drawing of two tents in a forest with a person sitting in the entryway of one tent
Source image generated via DALL-E

Maggie is a single mother in her thirties living in a small town in Northern California. Most of her life has been spent in the North State: her family is from the area and she grew up in a town nearby the one where she was currently staying. As such, Maggie’s narrative recounts experiences in her personal life that are intricately connected to various social and structural changes in the area.  

For example, Maggie used to be an educator, but with the growing cost of living the pay does not meet her needs:  

I would like to be a teacher again. But like I said, I’m a single mom. So, it’s, honestly, the pay is not super worth it. (scoffing) Like, and it sucks to say that, because the fulfillment that comes with the job is super worth it, but the pay grade and having to raise a kid on my own is not worth it at all.  

For Maggie, being unable to support her family as an educator coincides with “a lot of” other “not-very-good things [that] happen[ed] in a short span of time” in her life. Being displaced by the recent wildfire in her hometown is foremost among these, as Maggie described here:  

I’m kind of all over the place, but I’ve been lately staying up in [town…],  and it burned a little bit too, but not as bad as [neighboring hometown] did, and I am staying up there with my boyfriend in a travel trailer [, …] everybody’s in travel trailers. So, rebuilding, obviously, after the fire. […I]t’s so much more difficult than people even anticipate. Like, you have to get permits for everything, and like, you can’t even build a house or put a trailer on any land unless there’s a foundation, and if there’s not a foundation, you’re gonna get red-tagged right away [… T]here’s probably like, a good solid 80% of the people that can’t even live on their own properties that they own. […] They can’t even put a travel trailer on them to live in until they build their home. And they can’t just build a home because they’re waiting for the fire lawsuit to come through…  

Maggie is among a number of participants in the North State Smoking study who have dealt with the outcomes of recent devastating fire seasons in the North State. These include poor air quality from heavy smoke, the difficulty of evacuating and finding shelter, immense trauma and distress as well as displacement after the loss of property. Many participants, including Maggie, discussed the overwhelmingly supportive role of community in collecting donations for food, clothing, and other supplies after fires. More structural forms of support, however, were at times inaccessible. Maggie described the lack of available shelter after evacuation:  

… when everybody evacuated, [nearby towns] got filled up fast, and there’s no hotels. And so, people are in tents and in the Walmart parking lots, and then suddenly, the county banned sleeping in the parking lots anywhere. […] Like, (scoffing) it just – it’s rough. So, everybody kinda – Nobody had a choice. They got pushed out. If you didn’t have a place to land, you got pushed out.

Included among the destabilizing effects of fires are excess costs that come not only with rebuilding, but with surviving insecure temporary living arrangements in the meantime on limited income:

And then by the time the fire lawsuit comes around like – And we’re getting stipends basically. We only get like, chunks at a time. So, it like, almost defeats the purpose. Like, what – How is anybody going to A) survive off of a stipend like that, without having a home to live in – so, they’re pretty much bouncing around or living in a travel trailer, which gets super expensive – And then B) instead of just giving us one lump sum to go buy a home or buy some property or whatever it is that needs to be done, it just seems like it’s just difficult. It’s really hard on everybody.  

Though a fire may exist as a discrete event, its devastation is widespread and ongoing. Even with the financial support Maggie can barely afford her temporary living costs, much less pay for efforts to rebuild. Furthermore, the devastating impacts of recent fires are not isolated from other social and structural issues affecting Maggie and her community. Throughout her interview, Maggie described how the rising cost of living, lack of economic opportunities, devastation and displacement from wildfires, and an ongoing opioid crisis created significant challenges in the area:  

… lack of resources, lack of employment and careers, or career opportunities, limitations as far as it being such a small town. [… People…] struggle to get gas in their cars because gas prices go up, or pay for propane because they’re living in travel trailers, and that’s what they’ve had to live in since the fire. They don’t have another choice. […] With that opioid epidemic […] people my age are dropping like flies.

These community-level challenges clearly also impact Maggie personally, which she connected to smoking through the idea of coping with “a bad day” – noting that given everything she and her community are experiencing, it can be…

 … a little more difficult to quit smoking because […] Around here lately, especially in this town, it’s – it makes – sometimes it makes for a bad day every day. […] And so, I quit, and then the fire took place, and I started again. And yeah, it’s unfortunate. I guess, detrimental things like that tend to affect us more than we think they do. Yeah.

For Maggie the harm of smoking is just one consideration within the context of other harms that dominate her daily life. The limited availability of secure housing, occupations that meet living costs, and support after natural disasters have a compounded impact on communities. As Maggie’s narrative shows, structural issues like these can contribute to the use of substances to cope with difficult circumstances.  The compounded challenges in her life make nicotine and tobacco (NT) use a convincing option among the few available. When asked about the main reason she currently smokes, Maggie explained:  

Oh, because it’s a hell of a lot better than doing anything else. … Or indulging in other things, I guess. … I’m not going to go out and start smoking heroin because I’m having a bad day. I’m going to go smoke a cigarette … Everybody goes through something, and I mean, without fail. And you hear that all the time. But people, I don’t think, realize how seriously like, we all go through something. And so, if my only coping mechanism is to go and buy a pack of cigarettes, then – you know what? – I’m gonna go buy a pack of cigarettes. You know, I’m not going out and hurting somebody. I’m not robbing people. I’m not being malicious in my ways. Like, I’m just gonna buy a pack of cigarettes, and that’s that. You know?  

What does it mean when NT use for participants is “better than doing anything else”?  

Elaina Peterkin
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Em Sanders
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