Sadness, more than any other negative emotion, would increase the urge to smoke in tobacco users.
“Drown your sorrows in alcohol”. Everyone knows this expression and knows that being unwell tends to push people to make bad decisions and to take refuge in risky behaviors, whether it’s alcohol, drugs or cigarettes. Regarding the latter, sadness, more than any other negative emotion, increases the desire to smoke, shows today a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
To reach this conclusion, researchers from the Harvard Kennedy School (USA) analyzed data from a national survey of more than 10,000 people over a 20-year period. At the same time, they conducted other experiments, showing sad video clips to smokers to gauge their cravings at the time, or testing the volume and frequency of actual puffs of smokers’ cigarettes to gauge their impatience.
They found that participants’ self-reported sadness was associated with smoking. The sadder the participants were, the more likely they were to be smokers. In one of the experiments, the volunteers who had watched a sad video clip had more urges to smoke than the others. In another, smokers who felt depressed reported greater impatience with cigarettes and smoked larger volumes per puff.
“Sadness seems to be a particularly powerful trigger”
Until then, one could imagine that “any kind of negative feelings, be it anger, disgust, stress, sadness, fear or shame, would make individuals more likely to use an addictive drug” , comments lead researcher Charles A. Dorison. But “our work suggests that (…) sadness seems to be a particularly powerful trigger for the consumption of addictive substances”, he continues.
Ultimately, these results could have positive repercussions on public policy in the United States, the researchers hope. Current anti-tobacco advertising campaigns could, for example, be modified to avoid images that cause consumers to feel sad and thus unconsciously increase their desire to smoke.
“We believe that theory-based research could help shed light on how to deal with this epidemic (…) We need knowledge from several disciplines, including psychology, behavioral economics and public health, to deal with this threat effectively”, concludes Charles Dorison.
This is not the first time that researchers have made the link between sadness and cigarettes. This summer, another American study showed that quitting smoking could have a very negative influence on morale. In the past, other studies had associated mental disorders and tobacco while the smoker was still consuming it.
Cardiovascular diseases, cancers, fertility problems…
Tobacco is a global public health issue. The smoke from a cigarette contains more than 7000 chemicals. Among them, 69 are recognized as carcinogenic. In the long term, smokers are more likely to suffer from cardiovascular disease, respiratory or lung problems, such as asthma or excessive coughing, and certain types of cancer, especially of the lung. Smoking is also known to cause menstrual fertility problems in women, and erection problems in men. According to scientists, at least half of smokers will die as a result of their tobacco consumption. Indeed, their life expectancy is reduced by at least ten years compared to that of non-smokers. Unfortunately, one to four cigarettes a day are enough to increase the risk of dying prematurely.
In France, country of cigarettes par excellence, years of national fight against smoking have finally paid off. According to Public health Francethe prevalence of daily smoking fell from 29.4% in 2016 to 26.9% in 2017, i.e. one million fewer daily smokers in one year.
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