In the last 20, years a once popular pastime has gone from cool to crude through lawsuits and exposé health reports.

Despite all the research about smoking’s harmful effects and how it kills more than 440,000 people in the United States each year, still an estimated 4.6 million, or 22.5 percent of adults, continue to partake in the habit and think they have reasons for their actions.

Iana Vladimirova, senior accounting major, recently quit after smoking for several years. She thinks American society is discriminating against smokers and cites the fact many educational establishments in Europe provide specified smoking rooms for students and faculty. Missouri Southern prohibits smoking in any University buildings and asks students to not smoke within 15 feet of the buildings.

“It’s bad, but it’s not illegal,” Vladimirova said.

Tyler Coble, senior psychology major and current smoker, thinks it is the trend in society is focusing more on nonsmokers.

“It’s not necessarily a discrimination, because that’s more something you can’t help,” Coble said. “I think it’s just a growth in the demand for respect for nonsmokers.”

For a once national pastime and celebration of rebellious independence shared by such stars as James Dean and Dean Martin, smoking has come under intense pressure from the government and a large percentage of the U.S. population. Many nonsmokers have begun exercising their freedoms by vocally expressing their disapproval for the tobacco users around them.

Many smokers don’t appreciate the nonsmoking population’s newly found voice.

“I appreciate the concern,” Coble said. “But it’s not like they’re telling me something I don’t already know. It’s not like it’s late-breaking news.”

Even though Vladimirova doesn’t smoke anymore, she thinks it is hypocritical for Americans who don’t take care of their bodies to judge smokers for their habit.

“Why do you eat fast food?” Vladimirova said. “It’s not good for you, but you still do it. Obesity is a bigger problem in America than smoking.”

The Center for Disease Control names tobacco as the leading preventable cause of death in the United States and an estimated 6.4 million children living today will die prematurely because of a decision they will make as adolescents to smoke cigarettes. But for most smokers the reasons for continuing remain the same.

“Anymore it’s just habitual,” Coble said. “Before I eat; after I eat; when I wake up. When something becomes habitual, it becomes very hard to determine why you do it.”