Baby Boomers In Today's Society

Baby boomers are the demographic cohort, known as the generation that makes up the substantial portion of the world’s population. Individuals born during the time of 1946 to 1964 has lived in environments where smoking lead to a detrimental impact in their later years. As the third leading cause of death, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is common among the older population. This disease is the leading cause of both morbidity and mortality. Leading to a consensus that older adults (particularly baby boomers) are at a great risk of COPD because they grew up in an era where smoking was fashionable, cigarettes were provided during the wars, and exposure to secondhand smoke was tremendous. During the first decades of the 20th century, lung cancer and other

However, as cigarette smoking became increasingly popular in the 1960s, the incidence of COPD became well-known to the public (CDC, 1999). Back then, cigarette smoking was labeled as cool, cheap, and socially acceptable. Cigarettes were originally sold as luxury goods for the urban elite. Ubiquitous messages reinforced the positive attributes of tobacco, causing the youths to have the impression of smoking as a social norm. As a popular trend, the baby boomer generation became known as the “smoking era.” A 73-year-old woman named Pauline Mohi, who lived in New Zealand during the smoking era, stated “You smoked in the doctor’s office with a big full ashtray sitting on the desk. . .it was the lollies for the kids and cigarettes for the adults” (Broughton, 2016). Mohi started smoking at the age of 16, while working as a nurse aide at Burwood Hospital. From then on, she continued to smoke and lived her life with undiagnosed respiratory disease. To this day,