There are multiple reasons why people smoke cigarettes; the reasons vary from personal choices, a relief from stress to fit in as per the respective social situations of an individual. There is also the reason of addiction that makes people smoke cigarettes; nevertheless, whatever might be the reason, smoking is not good for the health of the smoker as well as people around the smoker (Pepper et al., 2014). It is significant to get to know the reasons of smoking since it would help to know the ways in which it can help a smoker to quit.

According to surveys, it has been found that in the year 2017, around 10.4 percent of the youth of America between the ages of 18- 24 smoked cigarettes; this data has been collected from National Health Interview Survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, the survey also shows a positive news that there has been a 20% drop in the percentage of smokers in America (West, 2017). There are multiple reasons why teenagers start the habit of smoking; in a way it is their method to defy parents and to be popular. There is also another reason known as the peer pressure, where teenagers take up the habit of smoking as a pressure from their friends. There are instances where it is also seen that children take up this habit form adults especially someone in their family. However, most of the time teenagers start up the habit of smoking to look “cool” in front of their friends, and others. It starts as a way of defying parents and to look “cool” but soon it becomes an addiction with fatal consequences to their health. It is the ‘nicotine’ that makes it so addictive (Pokhrel et al., 2015). When people take a puff of cigarette, this nicotine shoots right into the lungs and quickly gets absorbed into blood. Around eight seconds later, nicotine hits the brain and causes the brain neurons to create dopamine, a chemical that emits a queer feeling of pleasure (Jenssen, Buttenheim & Fiks, 2019). Hence what starts as a teen- rebel quickly turns into a harmful addiction that becomes too difficult to come out of.

There are personal reasons that makes a person to smoke and eventually give in to a habit that is harmful for their and their family’s health. Once a person is addicted to nicotine, it becomes tough for them to withdraw their habit. They start having withdrawal symptoms like feeling sad or depressed and hence they start smoking again. Studies have shown that around 26% of the smokers in United States admitted that they started smoking to feel more included and acceptable in their society (Harris, Pierce & Bargh, 2014). It has been observed that human beings tend to go on limits to be accepted by others and to feel like they belong to a place; hence when the social surrounding of an individual feels strongly about smoking, the non- smoker also starts to smoke to feel home. It is also a kind of indirect peer pressure that even adults find themselves in. in addition to this, the dopamine that they get from the nicotine helps the adults to cope up with their stress in work or other aspects of their lives.

Apart from the obvious reasons that explains why people smoke, there is also a factor that is influential and allures people to smoke cigarettes; this factor is the social advertising for promotion of tobacco brands. Children are the audience who are influenced the most by such tobacco promotions since they are not mature enough to understand the purpose of advertisement of such products, or any product. Adolescence is a period of time in an individual’s life when the youths feel most vulnerable and these tobacco advertising exploits such vulnerabilities of these youth by demonstrating tobacco as a source to create a self- image; such advertisements show tobacco as the token of gaining independence and as the key to be acceptable by all of their peers. Survey showed that such advertisements hiked the consumption of cigarettes by 89% in United States among whom 62% were teenagers (Fluharty et al., 2016). When the government saw the facts and the figures, they imposed a ban on such advertisements and increased the taxes on the tobacco products to keep the situation in control. No matter what the reasons are, smoking is not a good choice for any individual and the governments are taking strict measures to diminish this habit.

References:

Fluharty, M., Taylor, A. E., Grabski, M., & Munafò, M. R. (2016). The association of cigarette smoking with depression and anxiety: a systematic review. Nicotine & Tobacco Research, 19(1), 3-13.

Harris, J. L., Pierce, M., & Bargh, J. A. (2014). Priming effect of antismoking PSAs on smoking behaviour: a pilot study. Tobacco control, 23(4), 285-290.

Jenssen, B. P., Buttenheim, A. M., & Fiks, A. G. (2019). Using Behavioral Economics to Encourage Parent Behavior Change: Opportunities to Improve Clinical Effectiveness. Academic pediatrics, 19(1), 4-10.

Pepper, J. K., Ribisl, K. M., Emery, S. L., & Brewer, N. T. (2014). Reasons for starting and stopping electronic cigarette use. International journal of environmental research and public health, 11(10), 10345-10361.

Pokhrel, P., Herzog, T. A., Muranaka, N., & Fagan, P. (2015). Young adult e-cigarette users’ reasons for liking and not liking e-cigarettes: a qualitative study. Psychology & health, 30(12), 1450-1469.

West, R. (2017). Tobacco smoking: Health impact, prevalence, correlates and interventions. Psychology & health, 32(8), 1018-1036.