Did you want to show us where it says that people on welfare start smoking or smoke more if they're pregnant?
That's a red herring. The fact that they don't stop smoking while pregnant can be considered starting smoking or smoking more
compared to what the average woman would be doing without Medicaid.
Conservative estimates indicate that at least one out of every ten pregnant women smoke, accounting for half a million births per year (1). However, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), pregnant women on Medicaid are 2.5 times more likely to smoke than pregnant women not on Medicaid (2) and a separate study found that Medicaid provides health insurance coverage to 60-70% of all pregnant smokers (3).
1. See, e.g., Markovic, R., et al., "Substance Use Measures Among Women in Early Pregnancy," American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology 183:627-32 (September 2000).
2. Lipscomb LE, Johnson CH, Morrow B, Colley Gilbert B, Ahluwalia IB, Beck LF, Gaffield ME, Rogers M, Whitehead N. PRAMS 1998 Surveillance Report. Atlanta: Division of Reproductive Health, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2000.
3. Orleans TC et al, “Helping pregnant smokers quit: meeting the challenge in the next decade,” Tobacco Control 2000;9(Suppl III):iii6-iii11.
If you want to claim that they are smoking more because they are poor rather than because they are on Medicaid. You need to back that up. There's clearly a correlation between Medicaid and smoking during pregnancy. Can you show the same correlation with poverty, with and without Medicaid?
