Smokers' beliefs about the inability to stop smoking
Introduction
Continued use of a substance despite its causing problems has been attributed to addiction, habit, lack of willpower, etc. Which perceived causes are endorsed varies across drugs, places, subcultures and time periods (Peele, 1989). Such perceived causes may be important because they may influence treatment seeking; e.g., those who more readily endorse addiction as a cause of problems stopping smoking would be expected to more likely seek treatment.
The current study determined a) which perceived causes smokers report for an inability to stop smoking, b) whether these causes are logically related to each other, c) whether the causes predict treatment endorsement and d) whether perceived causes vary across disorders. Several prior studies have empirically examined how the lay public conceptualizes why people smoke and whether this differs from other drug disorders (Cunningham et al., 1994, Cunningham et al., 1996, Eiser et al., 1977, Weinstein et al., 2004, Fabricius et al., 1997, Kozlowski et al., 1989, Cunningham et al., 1993, Hughes, 2005, Humphreys et al., 1996). Although these studies present intriguing results, none focuses specifically on smokers' perceptions of the causes of other smokers' inability to stop smoking. Other studies have focused on why smokers believe they themselves cannot stop smoking (Balmford & Borland, 2008). We focused instead on smokers' perceptions of a modal smoker because oftentimes persons believe they do not conform to the norms for a group they belong to (e.g. smokers often state that they are at less risk of death from smoking than the modal smoker) (Weinstein et al., 2004).
Section snippets
Methods
We recruited smokers using the Zoomerang website (www.zoomerang.com) which has a database of 3 million US consumers who have agreed to complete online surveys in return for points redeemable for services and merchandise. We emailed an invitation to a random subsample of known current smokers that stated “Smokers wanted to complete a brief online survey (5–10 min) about your views of alcohol or cigarette use or obesity in return for Zoomerang points.” The website obtained informed consent and
Endorsements for the inability to stop smoking
Smokers endorsed addiction, habit, and stress as causes of continued smoking (nb—we use “inability to stop” and “continued smoking” as synonyms) but disagreed that inability to stop was due to a mental disease, personality problem, weakness of character, lack of motivation, family/upbringing, biological factors, genetics, denial or psychological problems (Table 1). Similar proportions of smokers agreed and disagreed that lack of willpower and lack of motivation were reasons for continued use.
Discussion
Smokers attributed continued smoking despite problems to addiction, habit and stress (Cunningham et al., 1994, Eiser et al., 1977, Balmford and Borland, 2008). This suggests that smokers see inability to stop as due to multiple different causes. In the study most similar to ours, done over 25 years ago, 71% of the general public stated tobacco use was an addiction (cf our 88% in our more recent sample of smokers only) and 75% stated it was a “habit, not disease” (cf. our 88%) (Cunningham et al.,
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