Smoking remains Scotland’s biggest cause of preventable illness and death.
Central to any discussion about smoking is that nicotine is as addictive as heroin, and that cigarettes are engineered to be addictive.
The factors that push people to smoke and make it harder for them to quit include stress, anxiety and boredom, but also what is normal in people’s communities, such as a lack of alternative coping mechanisms or a lack of hopeful or optimistic plans for the future.
This is where smoking becomes a social concern – and when some groups experience these factors more than others it should come as no surprise that they are statistically far more likely to smoke. So, we are able to understand why smoking rates in the most disadvantaged communities are several times higher than those in the most advantaged, why we see that half of all people out of work long-term smoke, and how it comes to be that a third of all tobacco smoked in the UK is used by people with mental health issues.
This is the dominant narrative for smoking in Scotland today, with the casual fag with a drink at the weekend increasingly a distraction from the main concerns.
ASH Scotland signed the recent joint letter calling on Scotland’s political parties to give robust support to the new Poverty and Inequalities Commission. Yet the focus of ASH is tobacco and smoking, so why sign a letter that centres on economic inequality. Smoking is not usually about free choice and people who do willingly choose to smoke now counts for just 7 per cent of adults in Scotland, a figure that is falling year on year. Looking at the factors that push them to smoke and prevent them from stopping is the purpose. Scotland still has the highest health inequality in Western Europe
http://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/sheila-duffy-unequal-society-helps-push-people-into-smoking-it-s-time-for-change-1-4596964
Central to any discussion about smoking is that nicotine is as addictive as heroin, and that cigarettes are engineered to be addictive.
The factors that push people to smoke and make it harder for them to quit include stress, anxiety and boredom, but also what is normal in people’s communities, such as a lack of alternative coping mechanisms or a lack of hopeful or optimistic plans for the future.
This is where smoking becomes a social concern – and when some groups experience these factors more than others it should come as no surprise that they are statistically far more likely to smoke. So, we are able to understand why smoking rates in the most disadvantaged communities are several times higher than those in the most advantaged, why we see that half of all people out of work long-term smoke, and how it comes to be that a third of all tobacco smoked in the UK is used by people with mental health issues.
This is the dominant narrative for smoking in Scotland today, with the casual fag with a drink at the weekend increasingly a distraction from the main concerns.
ASH Scotland signed the recent joint letter calling on Scotland’s political parties to give robust support to the new Poverty and Inequalities Commission. Yet the focus of ASH is tobacco and smoking, so why sign a letter that centres on economic inequality. Smoking is not usually about free choice and people who do willingly choose to smoke now counts for just 7 per cent of adults in Scotland, a figure that is falling year on year. Looking at the factors that push them to smoke and prevent them from stopping is the purpose. Scotland still has the highest health inequality in Western Europe
http://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/sheila-duffy-unequal-society-helps-push-people-into-smoking-it-s-time-for-change-1-4596964
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