Jack, one of the interesting things I read about tobacco addiction a couple of years ago is that smokers who are underneath the smoking habit highly neurotic or are using cigarettes to relieve anxiety to a marked degree have a lot more trouble quitting, and need more intensive programs to help them. The Mayo Clinic has an impatient program now, and it has a good success rate even with die hard smokers.
Definitely, although many people will somehow encounter a problem with cigarettes, alcohol, and/or drugs, these addictions are not all equally serious. I think that is where genetic and social factors really kick in. If you are a single mother living in a disadvantaged situation with a tobacco habit, and your whole family smoked, and there are people with guns on your block, and a lot of people on crack, it is a very stressful lifestyle, and also is very familiar, so it will be much harder to stop.
Life needs to be non-chaotic enough to see your addiction as a serious problem on its own, and certainly for a young woman who has been abused and has a boyfriend who smokes crack, cigarettes are a minor vise. Talk about social factors!!
It will be really hard to get everyone into the same place about quitting smoking, for sure!!! Already people are saying that raising the price of cigarettes discriminates against the increasingly low income group of people who buys them. |
