Tobacco is Killing the LGBT Community, Especially Bisexuals

Tobacco is Killing the LGBT Community, Especially Bisexuals

by Jordan RubensteinJuly 01, 2010 @ 09:30AM PTTopics: Bisexual Issues

Smoking is a major public health crisis. It is the number one cause of avoidable deaths in the United States, and over 400,000 Americans die annually as a result of smoking.

As discussed before on Change.org, smoking is also particularly common in the LGBT community. A new reportby the American Lung Association, Smoking Out a Deadly Threat: Tobacco Use in the LGBT Community, suggests that bisexuals have higher smoking rates than any other group, including gay men, lesbians and transgender people.

While most state surveys did not collect data on bisexuals, those that did found smoking rates between 30 and 39.1 percent for bisexual men and women. In each state where data was collected on bisexual smoking rates, more bisexual men smoked than both homosexual and heterosexual men and more bisexual women smoked than both homosexual and heterosexual women.

So why is the smoking rate higher for bisexuals than for straight and gay people?