Cigarette Smoking Contagion

Abstract

A ministudy was carried out with 50 male and female adults who are “regular” cigarette smokers to investigate the potential role(s) which contagion plays in smoking. Notwithstanding their reports that they were introduced to smoking by others 40% of the time, only 12% reported-remembered initiating someone else to smoking. The report of self-activated cigarette use is congruent with most views about smoking, but not regarding drug use. As long as drug use intervention utilizes contagion as a concept, deviance as a classification and varieties of isolation as control techniques will be associated with drugs, drug users, and drug use. By definition, social substances have no source of contagion by others. The decision to use or abstain is viewed as being personal notwithstanding the reality that it is related among other factors to a variety of market economies.