Just wondering, if there's suddenly less nicotine in cigarettes, could it mean that people will start smoking more cigarettes to get the amount of nicotine they need?
The only way to stop is to stop. If you keep them around they will be smoked, if you reduce the nicotine they will be smoked, if you go to places you associate with smoking you will smoke.
Maybe I got lucky by the “coming down” effect of quitting on my brain being nothing more than a strong itch, but it was pretty easy to reject by countering the thought with “I don’t want to smell horrible” or “you made it 1/2/6/12 months why go back now”. Not everyone can change their environment like I did though, it wasn’t because of cigarettes but I had moved to a new neighborhood, been apart from an abusive ex girlfriend, and had starting seeing someone new which all made it easier to move on.
I remember thinking in the early 80's that they should just cut the amount of nicotine in cigarettes by 3-5% per year. That was 35 years ago. Nicotine content would be down ~70% by now.
I think they same technique is or was used by heroin dealers too.
I'd personally ramp up non-smoker protections first in particular protections for kids (even within their own families), and then ramp up measures to prevent people from starting to smoke, like a ban on advertisements for smoking, a ban of "branding" on cigarette packs, making access to cigarettes harder. Measures and even incentirives to help people stop or at least reduce smoking will also help.
In 2014 I went to Australia, where I lived and worked for nearly three years. Anti-tobacco regulations there were far stricter than in the UK. Plain packaging had been introduced, prices were astronomical, smoking bans extended to many outdoor areas. My consumption reduced further (tobacco, that is - there was lots of terrific grass in Australia at agreeable prices).
After Australia, I spent a few years in central Europe (mainly based in Prague). Cigarettes were dirt cheap (a third or a quarter of the price in Australia or in the UK). Smoking in restaurants and bars was allowed, and my consumption increased. Then, while I was still based in Prague, smoking in bars and restaurants was banned - my consumption fell once again.
I've seen smoking presented, societally, as something sophisticated, and I have lived long enough to see that image exposed for what it was - so now people know that it's not sophisticated and that it is damaging. In the UK and Australia, and increasingly in central Europe, even smokers (myself included) do not smoke indoors even in our own homes. My behaviour, and that of other smokers, seems to have changed.
Tobacco pricing has had an effect, I think. Advertising/sponsorship bans may well be working - but I was already a smoker before they were implemented; figures on young people should be informative. Similarly with plain packaging.
My guess, then, is that smoking bans in social contexts (bars, restaurants, parks etc) have the greatest effect, and price also has a strong effect.
Perhaps more interesting, for me, has been to see the effects of smoking being increasingly stigmatised, via advertising bans and also in TV shows etc. Slowly but surely, acceptability has been chipped away. (And, of course, with the tobacco lobby having been caught out lying for decades; but I wouldn't overestimate the effects of that truth on society, though.)
There is no need to ban smoking, in my opinion. That would give it a new life and shadier markets. It is already dying as a habit.
Agreed.
The thing that no politician has touched yet is protecting children in their own home more rigorously, i.e. banning smoking in the vicinity of kids. Arguably that's hard because it infringes a lot on what people do in private, and also hard to enforce. Still, even as a mostly symbolic law it would have social impact.
Even before smoking bans, I knew about cancer risks, second-hand effects - plus the dangers of imitation. I, and others I know who are smokers, would never smoke in children's company or within their radar-assisted perceptions. We know we're dumb to smoke. We avoid encouraging it.