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From
the Los Angeles Times:
Study delves into the minds of smokers -
When millions of
Americans abandoned smoking in the 1980s, many health experts and social
scientists thought they had tobacco on the run. But in the '90s progress
began to slow: From 1990 to 2003, according to federal figures, only 3
percent of Americans gave up their cigarettes.
The slowdown prompted many experts to
conclude that most of the smokers who could easily quit already had done
so. What remained was a hard-core group of Americans who continued to
puff away despite significant health risks and severe social stigma.
So social scientists turned to a new
quarry: understanding the mind of the smoker. By profiling dedicated
cigarette addicts, scientists hoped they would find common traits and
use that knowledge to design anti-smoking campaigns. - Charles
Duhigg, Los Angeles Times
Where to begin the deconstruction when
there's so MUCH to deconstruct?
1) About those post-1990 quit rates;
first, the statistics seem to presume that no one came of age and
started smoking since 1990, and that therefore one could calculate that
the total number of smokers in 2003 was merely "what remained" of
the smoking population of 1990 — and then attempt to characterize them
based on a faulty assumption.
Second, the researchers notably fail to
account for the fact that continuous nagging —
inherently, by its nature —
has diminishing returns. It either
gets tuned out or, on the other hand, backfires.
Finally, and dealing now in social
psychology, it's not unsafe to presume that a majority of the quitters
are simply "other-directed" — people unduly concerned with what
Society (or their politically correct neighbor) thinks of them.
Therefore, the difference between the quitters and the smokers is just
as likely to be a difference between the "inner-directed" egos and the
"other-directed" egos than any measurement of "addiction." (More a
question of "Are you a hard-core individualist?" than "Are you a
hard-core 'addict'?")
2) Small wonder that smokers as a group
might be more depressed when they're publicly reviled, barred from
socializing, and now from employment and housing — and constantly
"studied" as though they're an alien species.
3) The egg comes before the chicken — as
the researchers mostly acknowledge...and then attempt to ignore. Smoking
doesn't cause anxiety and depression (or suicidal thoughts) any more
than, for instance, aspirin causes headaches or Mylanta causes gas. It's
a temporary cure.
4) "Smokers are more neurotic."
This hinges on how The Experts define neurotic. And how they define it
is probably pretty scary and would certainly encompass creativity,
imagination, zaniness, and — once
again — individuality.
5) The correlation of smoking with
alcoholism and drug use is just a statistical game. In fact, it's
more likely to be the other way around. Among druggers and
alcoholics, a rather high percentage may smoke; which doesn't lead to
conclusions that a high percentage of smokers are alcoholics or use
drugs.
6) This particular study about smoking
and depression was conducted in Detroit — a city with a large and mainly
blue collar and inner city population whose crime and employment woes
have blighted a generation.
7) About those naval recruits.
Again, in this particular social environment, the trait of
individualist, rather than team-player. seems to go along with
smoking Smokers now have to be insistent individualists, a fact which
may indeed create a problem in the military and, prior to that, at
school. Then too, consider the things that, in the funk of today's
schools, are now labeled "behavioral problems."
Drawing a picture of a gun; kissing a kindergarten classmate; having a
butter knife in a knapsack to cut a birthday cake for a friend.
Once again, what we're dealing with is
sociological context. Surely the smoking naval recruits of, say, WW2
(probably 80% of the total) were not considered a problem because
smoking wasn't a problem. The "problem" has been created by the people
who now define what's "normal" and what's a "problem".
8) That employers are firing smokers
because of smoking's "bad image" bears the shape of a vicious circle.
The "bad image" was manufactured. (Just as smoking's previous
"good image" was manufactured.) Today's "bad" manufacturers are
the dutiful do-gooders, so eager to "help" smokers that they've
demonized, "denormalized" and propagandized against them (for their own
good) — and then moronically stop to wonder why the smokers refuse their
"help." After all, they appear to reckon, the price of
re-normalization is as cheap a stick of gum and then, behold, all is
forgiven and you're back in the human race — as We The Experts define
human. What an exceptional invitation. (What a howling
strategic flop.) That their strategy doesn't appeal to the hearts
and minds of the inner-directed seems perpetually over their heads, and
their alternative explanation is to babble about "addiction."
John Stuart Mill could have explained it
a lot better. As he noted in "On Liberty":
"If there be among those whom it is
attempted to coerce into prudence or temperance, any of the material of
which vigorous and independent characters are made, they will infallibly
rebel. No such person will ever feel that others have a right to control
him in his concerns... and it easily comes to be considered a mark of
spirit and courage to fly in the face of such usurped authority, and do
with ostentation the exact opposite of what it enjoins." —
Or to put that another way, when society
indulges in its prohibitionist spasms, the very people it isolates and
cuts ITSELF off from are likely to be the most "vigorous and
independent," the most spirited and courageous, the most original
and creative.
9) And of course there's the final and
most delirious contradiction:
People who get their nicotine from
lighting a cigarette are degenerate and depressed, neurotic and
schizophrenic; but let them get their same nicotine through a spray or
patch, and, voila! they're completely normal. (Which proceeds to
the new conclusion that it's MATCHES that make us nuts.)
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