If we know tobacco is bad, why do we smoke?

One reason we smoke is that some of our peers smoke (or chew).  Unfortunately, many kids in their teens smoke, and will frequently offer a cig to someone else.  Everyone isn’t good at “Just say no” and they get started and then they are hooked.

Big tobacco is in the addiction business, and thanks to its invisible manipulation of the brains and bodies of young Americans, business is good.  It is particularly successful at selling young males who now smoke more than young females.

Target advertising

Today’s cigarette ads pitched to young men hammer themes about leaving the adolescent lifestyle behind and moving into independent adult thinking.  They depict males who smoke as cool, independent, strong, and very sexually attractive to females of that same age group.

Advertising role models have a message:  Smoking isn’t for mamma’s boys.  It’s for real men capable of making up their own minds.  It’s a righteous lifestyle choice, they say.  For example, in this corner we have a shirtless Brad Pitt in Fight Club, bloodied but unbowed, his abs chiseled, a cigarette hanging coolly from his lips.

In the other corner a goody-goody in a Lorillard public-service announcement, preaching to his peers that “tobacco is wacko.”  So which role model do young men pick?

Why can’t we quit?

There are men (and women) who say ‘I’m addicted, I’m desperate, I’m locked into this vile habit, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

There are three fundamental properties that influence the addictive potential of a substance such as nicotine.

1.  The ability to trigger a high.
Chemically speaking, nicotine binds to and “unlocks” nerve receptors in our brains that give an immediate high.  Research has shown that the parts of the brain that light up when you get a hit of nicotine or crystal meth are the same that are tripped by hitting the jackpot in a casino

2.  The speed at which that high hits the brain.
Nicotine is a faster fix. Most drugs, whether they’re swallowed or injected, enter the venous side of your bloodstream first.  That means the drug must circulate back to the right side of your heart, travel to your lungs, then return to the left side of your heart, which finally pumps the drug to your brain.  Smoking shortens the trip by bypassing the venous system and going right to your brain within a few heartbeats.

Phillip Morris found a way to produce an even quicker hit.  They did it by adding ammonia.  Other companies reasoned they couldn’t compete with Philip Morris without using ammonia as well, so the practice is now pervasive.  Almost all cigarettes now contain ammonia.

3.  The pain an addict feels when he/she tries to stop.
For the 70 percent of active smokers who are currently trying to quit (Yes, that’s most smokers), the pain of withdrawal – much more than the prospect of recapturing a high – is what makes quitting so difficult.

Here’s some more chemistry for you.  A few puffs of a single cigarette creates new natural receptor sites in the brain for a chemical called acetylcholine.  After as little as seven cigarettes over the course of a month, a nicotine virgin’s brain has begun compensating by sprouting additional receptors.  And they want to be fed!

As the number of cigarettes escalates, the situation only grows worse.  Smokers have millions more acetycholine receptors than non-smokers.  The result is that smokers often feel irritable; have mood swings, and intense cravings.

The pain of quitting is often too much to stop cold turkey.

 

Is there a solution?

Please read our Smoking Cessation articles.

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