Why do so many people continue to damage their health by smoking? Most smokers start before the age of 18, when they don´t fully appreciate the risks, says Abraham Brown (pictured right)
Cigarette smoking is the single largest preventable cause of premature death and illness in the UK. About 106,000 people in the UK die each year due to smoking. Tobacco is smoked to obtain nicotine, mainly to relieve symptoms of nicotine cravings and withdrawal. Apart from the fact that nicotine is addictive, the smoker exposes themselves to serious harm from approximately 4000 chemicals in cigarettes, hundreds of which are toxic. These toxic ingredients in cigarette smoke cause wide-ranging damage, for instance to the blood cells and immune system and may increase the risk of respiratory and circulatory diseases as well as various cancers.
Why smoke?
The majority of smokers start smoking before the age of eighteen. At such tender age they don´t really think about the health risks of smoking and certainly do not realise how addictive smoking can be. Basically, young people smoke because:
- Their friends smoke. Those children may live in an environment where their parents, grandparents and older siblings smoke, and so they smoke in order to look and act like them.
- They believe wrongly that smoking will help reduce their stress and make them look ‘cool’ instead of insecure and dependent on nicotine.
- Teenagers may even think that because smoking is an adult thing to do, they will actually become more mature by acquiring the habit.
- For females who smoke as much as males the desire to look confident is an important cause of smoking.
Never too late to quit
Stopping smoking can make a big difference to your health and lifestyle. No matter what age you give up, you reduce your risk of getting serious disease such as heart disease, cancers, and other conditions such as erection and fertility problems. But the sooner you stop, the greater the reduction in your risk. Remember that help is available if you find it difficult to stop smoking.
Combating the glamour
In spite of the health risks of smoking, the tobacco industry continues to glamorize smoking in things like packaging and in movies, making it look ‘cool’ and socially acceptable, primarily to attract young people to smoke. To prevent young people from taking up smoking and to encourage quitting the habit, health campaigns and regulations can help inform them about the dangers of smoking, de-glamorize smoking practises, and reduce the likelihood of smoking in social settings. For more information about health campaigns, and how to stop smoking please contact: a.k.brown@stir.ac.uk.
Dr Abraham Brown is a research assistant at the Institute for Social Marketing, University of Stirling, and a member of the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project.
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Comments
I read yesterday that parental/sibling role models are the most influential factor on whether young people start to smoke. So if you have a parent or a brother/sister who smokes, the chances are higher that you will too. As parents we really need to take some responsibility for our own behaviour (and that includes diet and drinking) if we are to stand any chance of encouraging our children to make the right choices.
I've been schooling my eight year old that it's not cool to smoke in the hope that it will provide some protection against any peer pressure later on. However, it's all very well being terribly sensible about smoking at eight, but who knows what the teenage years will hold!