Why do people smoke when the risks are so serious?

From Quora answer to "Why do people smoke when the risks are so serious?What can be done to discourage them?"

Thank for the A2A.

Nicotine is incredibly addictive, especially via the delivery mechanisms that tobacco companies have carefully designed to deliver the drug. So once a person gets hooked, it can be extremely challenging to quit. My father tried to quit smoking over and over again for the last fifty years of his life, but he could never quite kick the habit, even though he completely understood the risks. In the end, it helped end his life prematurely, just as he knew it would.

If you look at how other addictive drugs have been developed over time (both legal ones and illegal ones), the driver for that development is the same for all of them: profit. The profit motive is the primary reason that highly addictive drugs and delivery systems have been made so widely available to so many people, consequently ruining so many lives. So I think one aspect of the solution will be to shift our political economy away from an unrestrained corporationist commercialism that spends billions to get people hooked on its products. I address some ways we can begin doing this in my book Political Economy and the Unitive Principle. You can download a free DjVu copy of the book here: Political Economy and the Unitive Principle : T.Collins Logan : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive

On the other side of the equation, you will often hear people arguing that there would be no profit in addictive drugs if there weren't such strong demand. This is only partially true, but it still bears consideration. It is only partially true because when vast amounts of money are spent on marketing and ad campaigns to persuade young people that smoking (or drinking, etc.) is cool, sophisticated and socially favorable, then demand is being fabricated or carefully engineered. Someone who has never seen a cigarette or been persuaded (or pressured) to try one will not develop an addiction or contribute to demand for the product. So this is where the "free market" argument becomes pretty specious, especially since until relatively recently, there wasn't even much of an effort at all to counteract these sexy and persuasive corporate campaigns. Even efforts by the FDA, CDC and others to engage people with creative anti-smoking ads can't really compete with the deluge of influence from popular culture (again financed by tobacco companies) that has made smoking seem cool, interesting, sexy and sophisticated.

And yet the "why do people smoke?" question is still important. In my theory of Integral Lifework (see Home - Introduction), I propose thirteen dimensions of essential nourishment that need to flourish for healing, wholeness and personal growth to occur. Whenever one or more of these dimensions is neglected, we will tend to substitute something else to mask or compensate for the underlying nurturing that isn't happening. This substitution can then spiral into thoughts, behaviors and addictions that are self-destructive. So one way to avoid the impulse to smoke would be to make sure all of those dimensions are being cared for. If we have a strong "Supportive Community" that reinforces healthful values, for example, we will feel less swayed by peer pressure from outside of that community to smoke. If we feel fulfilled and vibrant in our dimensions of "Playful Heart," "Fulfilling Purpose," "Healthy Body" and the other areas of our life, we won't feel the same urge to medicate away anxiety or depression with nicotine. In fact my clients have had success in overcoming addictions simply by targeting one or two dimensions that had previously been undernourished for a long time.

So I would approach this difficult challenge from two angles: holistic self-nourishment and transformation of capitalism as we know it. As within, so without.

My 2 cents.

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