I started in high school because of peer pressure. I've since quit, but I think that the majority of people that start only do so because their friends do.

Plus, smoking a cigarette feels really good. Once you're addicted, they don't, but until then they just feel really nice.

Self-Medication.

Nicotine is a stimulant that elevates the mood almost like magic.

The numbers are particularly telling if you look at schizophrenia sufferers. People with schizophrenia are about 2.5 time more likely to smoke than people without.

> where we were bombarded with anti-smoking ads

You've answered your own question: rebellion.

That was the main reason I was sneaking cigs in the alley after school.

A ton of factors, but there is some reason for hope. The smoking rate among US adults has been dropping at about 0.5% per year more-or-less consistently for decades, and is currently well under 20%! The ads, regulations, and outreach you're talking about are working, but major societal change is slow. Remember, in the 50s, the smoking rate was nearly 50%! Dropping that rate by half in less than one lifespan is pretty good, I think.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0762370.html

Because addiction has very little to do with the substance itself, and it is mostly a coping mechanism to deal with many of the issues people of all social strata can face: traumas, broken homes, lack of self-realization, isolation, etc...

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park

Or in comic form:

- http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comics_en/rat-park

Have you met people? Can you name a topic where ad campaigns and available facts have been 100% persuasive? It just doesn't work like that. For one thing, people are bad at assessing abstract risks--they figure it won't happen to them, or something else will get them first. Especially since most smokers start young, at a time when they're _especially_ bad at making these kinds of decisions (and the tobacco industry counts on that).

Have you ever done something that's bad for your health in the long term because it feels good /now/? Like, I dunno, eating fast food, drinking soda, drinking alcohol? Stayed up too late browsing the Internet?

While most of these are far less severe than smoking (perhaps obesity, drinking give it a run for its money), all of them are bad for our health in the long term and we know it, but we do it anyway. There's plenty of information out there to know about it, it's not like people don't know alcohol or burger king is bad for you. So why do people do it?

When you answer that question you'll have the answer to your question.

A lot of especially young people just plain do not care what happens to them when they are 70.

"I started smoking when I was a kid, like when I was ... like 14 and I thought, "I'll look really cool if I start smoking." Because I didn't get along with anybody. So, I started smoking, and wouldn't you know it? I did look cool! All of the sudden, all these broads liked me and everything. Not broads, but ladies, girls, whatever."

-- Norm Macdonald

Story time! I smoked my first cigarette when I was 20. I was living in chicago, and at the time I was homeless and had spent about an hour and a half sitting on one of the train stops contemplating jumping in front of one. Obviously, I was looking a bit distraught, and a woman came up to me to ask if I was alright. I said I was fine, and she offered me a cigarette. I figured at this point, who cares. I was literally about 10 feet and an impulse away from killing myself, so I accepted. I was able to resist that particular impulse, but the anxiety and depression have more or less followed me. I continued smoking, and my daily use has varied, and even ceasing periodically for months at a time. But I find myself turning back to smoking at times when I am so anxious and depressed that I really want to die. It helps me to calm a little, and placate the suicidal impulse long enough to pass.

> Why do people continue to start smoking?

Because tobacco smells and tastes nice (cigarettes mostly don't, but cigarettes are to the tobacco world as McDonald's is to the hamburger world). It stems the appetite and heightens the mind.

Why don't more people start to smoke?

I would imagine that the sheer propagandistic nature of the ads themselves would backfire in cases.

Addiction isn't that predictable. Lots of people can drink regularly and stop when they want to, lots of people can do cocaine a few times and not get addicted. That doesn't mean alcoholism and cocaine addiction don't exist.

You're right! Now that we have one single data point, we can make a generalization about cigarette addiction as a whole! And now we can just forget about the many decades of research ACS and other organizations have done tracking millions of smokers around the world, because you are the only data point we need!!

Same for me, but don't generalize - some people get easily addicted, some don't.

By that logic I can say because I've been drunk a number of times in my life but are in control of the substance, I think alcoholism is blown out of proportion.

Building tolerance and addiction is highly dependant on the individual, and so is quitting. Besides there's a difference between "a couple packs" and a long term smoking (at which point you're not yet that much addicted but smoke due to different reasons and get addicted in the meantime).

You smoked a couple of packs of cigarettes and quit. Are you implying that because you had such an easy time quitting, everyone else should too? That would be anecdotal, don't you think?

Coming from someone who used to smoke 2 packs a day, the addiction wasn't from the cigarettes themselves. It was from the life I had. I was depressed, had a dead end job, a shit relationship, family problems, etc. I tried to quit a number of times, but had many difficulties due to the fact that everything around me was constantly on fire.

I finally quit when things picked up. It was still a challenge going from around 40 cigarettes a day to none (cold turkey), and I ended up saying some things I definitely shouldn't have in the process, but I did it.

It's a similar story for many smokers. Also, if anything, it was blown out of proportion in the 90's. Things seem to have calmed down since then.

Yup and alcoholism isn't real because some people have a glass of wine with dinner.