Why Do People Smoke Cigarettes
Facts About Smoking Behaviour Determinants

Why do people smoke? With all the knowledge about the many harmful health effects of smoking cigarettes it is mystifying why people start smoking.

Young smokers are the majority of new smokers and the addictive effects of nicotine are not what determines smoking experimentation.

Cigarette smoking statistics reveal the facts about smoking behaviour. Social and psychological factors are the most important factors in cigarette smoking initiation.

People start smoking mostly to satisfy unmet emotional needs and the age group most vulnerable to experiment and dismiss the smoking facts and dangers of cigarette smoking are the young.

Despite the best efforts of school curriculums to educate about the many health effects of smoking cigarettes, young smokers are still joining the ranks of the world wide population who are under the addictive influence of the effects of nicotine.

In 1995 the Health Canada Youth Smoking Survey yielded some important results that have helped to understand more about the influences on young smokers.

A number of factors are influential in getting teens started on smoking cigarettes and none of them are based on smoking facts.

The survey has been regularly repeated every few years and while the numbers are changing, the reasons young smokers give for starting smoking have not changed since the survey was first initiated.

Why Do People Smoke Cigarettes?

According to the young smokers themselves here is what got them started.

• "My friends do it" - emerging adolescents are strongly influenced by the behaviour or their friends and want to fit in with a group they identify with.


• "Curiosity and boredom" - adolescence is a time of experimentation as youth try to form their own self identity and forge their own path in life. Trying out new things is not unusual during this stage.


• Smoking behaviour is normalized - Young smokers ignore the known health effects of smoking cigarettes and take their first puff because it is a behaviour that is normal and familiar to them. If good people they know smoke then how can it smoking be bad?

  It would appear that they are unable at this stage to accept that a good person can make a bad decision.

  
  
  Images in cigarette advertising, exposure to smoking in the movies and on television, and observing their own family members teaches them that this behaviour is normal and acceptable. They form their own smoking fiction and rationalizations that if people they admire and look up to do this then there cannot be bad effects of smoking.


• Its Cool - Knowing that they look and act like people they admire boosts self esteem.

It is obvious that the determinants of smoking initiation are psychosocial in origin. The surveys have consistently shown that young people in Canada are well aware of the facts and dangers of smoking cigarettes and secondhand smoking, yet these psychosocial forces influence them to experiment with tobacco.

Emotional needs are powerful motivators of human behaviour and it takes a powerful need to ignore the known facts and dangers of cigarette smoking and place your own health in jeopardy.

Why Do People Smoke?
Maybe They Smoke Because They Can Afford To?

One thing is certain, financial status and the ability to afford the cost of cigarettes is not what determines why people smoke. The majority of smokers worldwide are among the less educated, lower income populations and those with income and more education are giving up smoking at a robust rate.

Go to the top of "Why Do People Smoke" - Family Smoking Facts

Go back to Effects of Cigarettes - Smoking Behaviour and Family Smoking Facts

Go home to Smoking Facts Reveal the Real Dangers of Smoking Cigarettes