Just speculating here but I hung out with some NYC folks last month in SoCal and they practically all smoked. It was very strange, I rarely encounter smokers living in California.
Cigarette smoking rate is widely studied; no reason to use anecdotal data here.
The tobacco smoking rate in New York is 14.1%; it's 11.3% in California. Some difference, yes, but far less difference than you see between either and some rural southern states where the numbers can be roughly double that.
