In making our decision to stop smoking, you and I have probably traveled similar routes. But for the purposes of this book, it's important to go back over some of the territory we covered independently. First we have to understand why people smoke, which is the subject of this chapter. Then why almost every other method of breaking the cigarette habit has within it the elements of failure; and then we'll learn the new approach, and well succeed at last.
Let's start by facing what seems to be an overwhelming fact. Smoking must be a pleasure. If it were not, why would at least six of every ten adult Americans smoke either occasionally or regularly? If it were not, why would they spend an average of $1.40 a week, every week in the year, for tobacco products?
So let's grant, then, that for most people smoking is a pleasing part of life. And let's not pretend that either of us would sacrifice this apparently delightful habit for minor reasons.
It's true that we don't like to find bits of tobacco in 22 our pockets or purses, and it is annoying and expensive when we occasionally burn a hole in a jacket or dress or upholstered chair, and some of us are truly displeased by "tobacco breath" or "nicotine stains," and quite a few of us are dismayed by the amount of money we "burn up" each year-but we all have other expensive or potentially annoying habits or interests, and we don't show equal concern about them; the question of the why people smoke is overwhelming. No, those of us who have at one time or another made the attempt to give up cigarettes have invariably been impelled by what I used to call "that health propaganda." Sporadically we'd come upon reports blaming the smoking habit for everything from athlete's foot to yellow fever. But other studies, prepared by researchers and physicians whose names were followed by suitably impressive degrees and abbreviations, absolved cigarettes of all guilt. The layman had trouble deciding who was speaking against what, and why, and to whom and for whom (and for how much). Lets discuss some reasons why people smoke.
We Enjoyed the Uncertainty
Thus while we suspected that where there's smoke there's fire, we weren't quite ready to believe that where there's smoke there's also likely to be heart disease and lung cancer. Some of the evidence was contradictory. Some was fragmentary. Much of it left aside such other possible factors in disease as polluted air, industrial poisoning, food additives, widespread use of insecticides, increased tensions of Cold War living, and over employment of "miracle drugs." Almost all the reports were based on studies involving animals, not humans.
One impulse was to quit. The other was to wait for something "definite." After all, why go through so much pain and so much frustration if later it might turn out that there hadn't been any real need to do so?
Well, the period of uncertainty is over in the minds not only of most experts but even for most smokers. Vast numbers of people who smoke now readily grant that there's no longer any question but that this is a dangerous habit. A poll in mid-1962 was designed to uncover smokers' attitudes toward smoking; and sixty percent of those questioned called it decidedly harmful.
This is a unique situation, isn't it? Suppose, to put it in perspective, that seventy million Americans regularly drink a beverage named "Grggssshh" (a name my attorney insists I use in order to protect the innocent). And suppose that an eminent medical group suddenly declared: "The moderate drinker of 'Grggssshh'-ten to fifteen swallows a day-showed up five times more often as a cancer victim than the non-drinker."
How long do you think good old "Grggssshh" would remain on the market? Even if the government didn't ban it, how long would Mom buy it at the supermarket? Indeed, how many supermarkets would even stock it?
Well-surprise!-there is no such statistic about "Grggssshh." My figures are borrowed from a report on the effects of cigarette smoking. In 1960 the American Medical Association summarized a five-year study of the death rate among men from lung cancer as linked to cigarette smoking:
1. The moderate smoker, 10 to 15 cigarettes daily, showed up five times more often as a victim of fatal lung cancer than did the non-smoker.
2. The heavy smoker, 15 to 25 cigarettes daily, showed up fifteen times as often in lung cancer deaths as the non-smoker.
3. Excessively heavy smokers, 25 to 50 cigarettes daily, showed up twenty-five times as often in lung cancer deaths as non-smokers.
The smoker winces when he reads this kind of look into his future-but it doesn't stop him from smoking.
It didn't stop you, did it?
And do you want to know why? Well, for one thing, part of your mind doesn't believe it. Part of your mind thinks that smoking is just swell for you, that it makes you happier and healthier and nicer-looking and maybe even richer and stronger and more glamorous-and this part of your mind flatly refuses to pay attention to anything in conflict with its beliefs. More reasons why people smoke are discussed below.
We Keep Delaying Difficult Decisions
People will almost never exchange present discomfort for possible future comfort-and there's another reason for continuing to smoke. Why be nervous and tense today? Who cares about what happens twenty years from now? Heck, in ten years the bombs may fall and kill us all! Anyhow, you have to die of something. Why not have some fun today? All those were typical rebuttals of mine-and here are some of the other points I used to tick off in my mind after something or someone had challenged my smoking:
Item: Tension is a bad thing, and is known to be responsible for physiological damage. It contributes to heart ailments. It can cause ulcers. Smoking, on the other hand, seems to relax people. When a man is faced with a decision, when a woman is caught up in a whirl of nervousness, a pause for a smoke seems to have a reliably relaxing effect. The "butterflies-in-the-stomach" kind of anxiety which people experience in social or business situations is frequently eliminated or at least subdued by smoking. In other words, a cigarette is a sort of drugless tranquilizer. A good thing- score one for smoking.
Item: Besides, there are now good filter cigarettes. Some of that "health propaganda" may be accurate, and perhaps a number of people can be harmed by smoking, or are allergic to it-but fortunately, there are now cigarettes which filter out many of the possibly harmful irritants. The new filters are quite advanced, and in some vague way are similar in content and efficiency to the filters utilized on airplanes and in the production of atomic energy; in other words, able to filter almost anything out of anything.
Item: Furthermore, practically everybody smokes. For every ten adults you know, you can think of six or seven or eight who smoke. You can think of athletes and coaches and actors who smoke (and you don't see them dying all over the place, do you?). People "in the know"-statesmen and politicians and newspaper editors seen on television-are invariably smoking. You can even name doctors who smoke! If they were really so concerned, wouldn't they just use a little will power or self-control and stop? Yes. Obviously then, they realize that there's a mighty difference between dropping tars from a cigarette on the shaved back of a rat and smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.
If you look back over these fairly typical responses, you'll see how nicely they cloud the issues. Even I used to have to laugh at my own excuses for continuing to smoke, and even I was amused at the fact that I could transform an AMA report about cancer in men and women to cancer "on the shaved back of a rat" in a few hundred words.
So I decided that I had to look deeper. I began to wonder about the psychological values of smoking.
Cigarettes Are a "Status Symbol"
I realized on reflection that in almost every culture there is some sort of public declaration of one's coming of age. The primitives in Africa and South America perform elaborate rites to mark the passage from adolescence to adulthood. In the United States, our "ritual" consists of the freedom to smoke in public.
Until a certain point, our young people are prohibited from smoking. "It will stunt your growth," we warn them. "Only bad kids smoke." As the youngsters grow older, we tell them to wait: "You're not old enough to smoke. You're still a kid." Man, do we make that forbidden fruit attractive!
The kids practice, of course. They sneak cigarettes in bathrooms, in the school yard, outside their own neighborhoods. They work hard at learning to inhale without coughing or becoming ill. The girls practice tapping away the ashes; and at first they tap so diligently and so continually that their cigarettes look more like pretzels than fine, clean, sparkling white super-filtered royal-lengthed creations of superior tobaccos.
And then comes The Day-when somehow it is all right to smoke in public! When I was a high-school senior I couldn't take three steps out of the front door of my house without "lighting up." I wanted the world -and particularly several cute girls in the neighborhood-to know that now I was a "man." (Funny thing -but that habit persisted until the day I finally gave up smoking!)
I remember the girls I dated in those days. The most longed-for gift in their circle was a cigarette case-and-lighter "set." Put three girls at the same table, and they would be sure to compare their sets before discussing which brand of cigarettes each smoked, and why. (Chances are they all smoked the same brand, the one that then seemed to be the choice of the sophisticated, the knowledgeable, the fashionable.)
Our Least Expensive Luxury
What else in America is so inexpensive a symbol of "maturity"? A car costs several thousand dollars-but a pack of cigarettes can still be bought for little more than a quarter. What else provides such easy conversation? Who among us can't explain now-or couldn't explain then, in our teens-that Flubbs are the cigarettes we like best because they're easy on the throat, because they're packed so well, because we like their shape and size and fresher taste?
Moreover, what else in America is so ideally fitted to informal sociability? The Indians extended the peace-pipe; we say "Have a cigarette." We can say it to a new acquaintance; the gesture breaks the ice, and costs us less than a penny and a half. We don't hesitate (well, many of us don't) to ask a stranger for a light (and imagine how many friendships have begun that way). When conversation lags, and boredom might result, the gap can be filled with a cigarette and all the chatter and gestures that go with it. Cigarettes are social first aid for the teen-ager, and their usefulness lingers on. After oxygen, water and food, in that order, tobacco is the fourth item of human consumption (no pun intended).
In sum, then, I realized that I had waited with expectancy for the day-thirty years in the past-when I could first smoke in public. I had rehearsed for it, and I had learned to like the taste, the feel, the look, and the many social uses of cigarettes. I still did.
I continued to smoke. And as you know, I wasn't alone. These are some of the reasons why people smoke.
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