Chapter 5
Approaches Directed to the Social Environment
PUBLIC OPINION
AND TOBACCO USE
The addictive nature of tobacco notwithstanding, tobacco
use appears to be largely a socially mediated practice that is
susceptible to change in the social environment. Changes in
cigarette consumption in the United States seem to mirror shifts
in public attitudes and opinions about smoking (Warner, 1986a).
Figure 1 demonstrates a correspondence between the per capita
cigarette consumption of adults and the timing of major public
events related to smoking and health. Increasing consumption
between 1900 and 1950 can be related to application of newly
developed marketing and advertising techniques by the tobacco
industry and impact of World Wars I and II, when millions of men
were introduced to cigarettes in the armed forces (Warner, 1986a;
Whelan, 1984).
Most studies of seminal events that affected public
awareness and knowledge about smoking, such as publication of the
first Surgeon General's Report in 1964, have shown significant
decreases in cigarette consumption in the year of the events
(Hamilton, 1972; Warner, 1977 and 1989). several studies have
found the events to have a cumulative downward influence on
demand for cigarettes. Warner, projecting from prevalence rates
and trends of the mid-1960's found that 1985 smoking rates for
every age and sex cohort were significantly lower than expected,
with the greatest decreases from the projected rates in the
younger cohorts (Warner, 1989). He estimated that in 1985 there
were 35 million fewer smokers than expected, a 38 percent decline
in anticipated prevalence. Warner attributers this difference to
changes in the social environment spawned by scientific and
social interest in he hazards of smoking (Warner, 1986a and
1989).
As social beings, humans are subject to a desire to
conform, to adopt the social conventions, customs and norms of
the majority (Wrightman, 1977). to the extend that individuals
perceive their actions as deviant, there will be pressure to
conform to the dominant public opinion. the history of tobacco
used traced in Figure 1 can be seen in these terms, initially
reflection increasing social sanction of smoking (first by men
and then by women), then growing disapproval of smoking as a
practice dangerous to the smoker and, later, to others.
203
Per capita consumption of cigarettes (18 years and older),
1925 to 1990 Chart (chart missing)
204
Perception and internalization of social norms arise from a
process in which the individual observes the distribution of
opinion and behavior in the environment. the environment consists
of both primary and secondary social networks (e.g., family,
friends, and workplace) and impressions of society at large,
derived largely from the mass media (Noelle-Neuman, 1974). In
this light, an important function of tobacco advertising and
promotion is to fill the environment with messages reinforcing
the perception of smoking as a socially approved, accepted, and
even desirable behavior (Davis, 1987; Tye et al, q987; Warner,
1986a).
Efforts to control tobacco use, then, should focus on
creating a social environment that provides persistent and
inescapable cues to smokers to stop smoking and to nonsmokers not
to start. Such an approach assumes that the best way to change
individual behavior is to intervene through the social structures
in a community that help shape and individual's opinions and
attitudes (Warner et al., 1986).
205 (con't in next section)
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