No matter how well-argued the opponents of smoking, no matter how convincingly they prove their case, research on the dangers of smoking remains in demand. The reason is the same that does not allow the nicotine lover to part with it - our self-doubt.
What's new about the dangers of tobacco?
There are no radically new data on the effects of resins and alkaloids contained in tobacco smoke. The process of voluntary poisoning of the body has not changed, from any side. As in the days of the discoverers of the American continent, all the same poisons enter the body through the respiratory system and act in the same way. However, something happens in our knowledge about the dangers of smoking.
The list of diseases has been refined and expanded. This is due to a deterioration in the quality of tobacco, due to demand growing after the world's population. As a result, cigarettes have become more expensive and worse, causing many smokers to switch to cheap, low-grade brands. Together with a deteriorating ecology and a decline in the quality of food, this causes increasingly acute forms of disease. Some of them did not belong to the category of caused by smoking before. It sounds gloomy, but this is far from the whole truth.
The first studies that provided disappointing data were conducted in limited groups. Additional factors were not taken into account: age, heredity, previous illnesses. Feeling an ever-increasing threat to public health, government bodies joined in the study of the problem. Programs began to finance properly, and savings became inappropriate.
What did it turn out to be? The list of diseases caused by the harm of smoking has grown. They began to classify disturbances in the blood supply to the brain and the diseases caused by this, which were previously considered senile. Detailed studies of statistics collected over the course of nearly a century have shown a dramatically increasing risk of autism in the grandchildren of heavy smokers. Before, the causes of these deviations were attributed exclusively to genetics.
By observing smokers throughout their lives, it has become possible to dispel the myth of smoking as a way to control weight. It was possible to establish that the habit of sharp tastes, caused by the ingress of tobacco combustion products into saliva, stimulates the use of salty and spicy foods. People who smoke much more often and in large quantities consume unhealthy food, tend to supplement it with flavor enhancers.
What is affirmed or disproved?
Sensing a threat to their deadly business, companies associated with the production and sale of tobacco launched an anti-campaign under the banner of debunking myths. Of course, this is done implicitly and is in no way connected with big capital. Let us examine the most obvious contradictions in these statements.
So, the myths that turned out to be false:
• Smoking focuses. This is partly true, but in practice, having gathered and concentrated for a few minutes, then the smoker needs a new injection of nicotine. In general, if you calculate its performance in comparison with a non-smoker, it differs little. Throwing out the time spent on breaks from here, they come to negative values at all.
• Smoking relieves stress. Partial truth. The result is short-lived and almost not associated with substances inhaled with smoke. Using nicotine-free placebo, the researchers achieved approximately the same effect - the smoker calmed down rather thanks to the ritual. The reasons for this include the macho effect, which is not at all compatible with the image of the macho man. An adult respectable person calmed down, unconsciously repeating the actions of a nursing infant.
• Light cigarettes are safer. If a smoker can painlessly lower his dose of nicotine 5–8 times, then giving up it altogether is a matter of elementary perseverance. Indeed, the less tar and nicotine in a cigarette, the less harm the body receives. In practice, few people hold back and do not increase the number of breaks.
Are bans effective?
From the very expression “propaganda of a healthy lifestyle” it blows with bureaucracy and archaism, and the effect of these actions at first glance is small. The increase in excise taxes on tobacco, and after them the price of cigarettes, had the effect of reducing smokers by a few percent. It would seem completely ineffective.
In practice, no one seriously calculated that heavy smokers would immediately begin to massively say goodbye to a bad habit. There were fewer smokers on the streets, cigarettes didn’t have an eyesore in the tobacco departments, and eerie pictures appeared on packs. The cumulative impact is designed to deprive smoking as such.
No less effective was one of the incentive principles included in the recommendations of the World Health Organization. This refers to the offer of help for quitting tobacco. This is often done by charitable foundations that distribute medicines for free to alleviate the physiological and psychological dependence on nicotine.
The most effective was the long-term result of financial pressure. A gradual increase in excise taxes is hardly noticeable only in annual statistics. If you apply the practice of large numbers and compare countries with different rates of excise taxes, you can see a slowly but steadily falling number of smokers, in proportion to the increase in tobacco prices.
Conclusions and useful recommendations
Since no consoling data could be found, then all the advice comes down to the banal: quit smoking!
Physically, this has become much easier; pharmacists are developing more and more effective medications that make nicotine refusal easier. Even many years of dependence can be overcome in this way.
Repeated research over and over again confirms itself: dubious pleasure results in serious health consequences. Well, each new negative result of experiments, even if it does not look so significant, only adds confidence in the obvious: smoking is harmful!
