# Why do people start smoking? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 1, 2006, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-start-smoking/350814 "2006-04-01T04:25:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Logan\_5](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/fbc32d/32.png) [@Logan\_5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Logan_5)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2006, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-start-smoking/350814/41 "2006-04-04T21:23:24Z")
I guess I am one of the odd ones. Never had a problem with smoking. I tried it as a teen, didn’t do much for me. I had relatives who smoked and sometimes it bothered me, other times I didn’t care. In college I would occasionally have one with a drink, but I never picked up the habit. I could have one one night, not have another for months, smoke 5-6 for several nights and then go back to not smoking for months or years at a time. I think my longest stint smoking was a few months of maybe 1-5 cigs a day. I do enjoy pipe tobacco once in a blue moon. I love cloves the most, but they are pretty harsh and I will buy a pack once in a while and smoke it over several weeks, but by then my desire for smoking wanes and I’ll go many months without smoking again. So then why? I enjoy the act of smoking. I know this is hard for many who struggle with the addiction, for those who live with smokers and those who just hate smoke and I do not mean to in any way belittle or dismiss the negative effects on individual or societal health, but there is a romantic notion to going to a tobacconist, looking over the many assorted jars and tins, smelling the different blends and flavors of tabaccos, looking over the hand crafted pipes and cool lighters, walking into a humidor and taking a deep breath of that earthy, leathery, woodsy aroma. I enjoy a quality smoke with a fine aged spirit, a bourbon or a cognac, and watch the stars twinkle from the back yard. The glow of the cherry that gets brighter with a drag, the embers that float away up towards the dark sky, the sound of the pop and hiss, the warmth around my tongue and the release of smoke that streams away from me and twists and turns and dissipates, that’s what smoking is for me. ---
**Author:** ![lazurm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7c8e57/32.png) [@lazurm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lazurm)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2019, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-start-smoking/350814/42 "2019-02-18T14:05:31Z")
My neighbor has a smoking girlfriend and they share the house next door to me. He had always been athletic and, somehow, fell in love with a smoking woman. Over the years I’ve seen him trying to convince her to stop smoking but nothing worked. Being high school teachers they had the summer off and, amazingly, the woman convinced him that, if he’d start smoking and continue through the summer break she’d feel it would be far easier to quit as they’d be quitting together. He’d hide his smoking, though I’d occasionally catch him when looking down into their yard from my second story window. Looked weird to me. Anyway, it’s been years since. They’re both married and, yes, both smoking. I hardly ever see him on his bicycle these days either. It just goes to show you how powerful an addiction is. The odd thing of it is that he’s still verbally against smoking but admits he didn’t know how addiction can work. Lesson learned? ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2019, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-start-smoking/350814/43 "2019-02-18T14:16:56Z")
With recognition that this a very old bumped thread I note that over the past dozen years more start smoking simply because it is natural transition from vaping. Fewer _start_ smoking now. They vape first and move into it. Any here who had that path? ---
**Author:** ![Turble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8dc957/32.png) [@Turble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Turble)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2019, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-start-smoking/350814/44 "2019-02-18T15:20:04Z")
I’m sure you can find plenty of anti-tobacco agenda-driven content to back up your statement. When it comes to agenda-free research the results don’t support that idea. [Did Vaping Stop the Downward Trend in Adolescent Smoking? One survey shows cigarette use holding steady, while another shows it continuing to fall.](https://reason.com/blog/2019/02/14/did-vaping-stop-the-downward-trend-in-ad) [Declines in Adolescent Smoking Accelerated As Vaping Rose, Suggesting the FDA’s Campaign Is Fatally Misguided Even among teenagers, efforts to prevent underage e-cigarette use may do more harm than good.](http://reason.com/blog/2018/11/21/declines-in-adolescent-smoking-accelerat) ---
**Author:** ![kopek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kopek/32/337_2.png) [@kopek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kopek)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2019, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-start-smoking/350814/45 "2019-02-18T17:19:36Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Fewer _start_ smoking now. Nationally that may be true but I haven’t seen it around me; I still see people starting right from the beginning the old fashioned way. Mostly because: > [@Nava](#): > > 1. It’s cool. Yes, still. Yes, we’ve seen the adds. So? You’ve seen the “your brain on drugs” ads too, haven’t you? Kids still think that smoking (diverse things) is cool. > > 2. In my case, I knew tobacco would have a calming effect. Sure enough, it did. And add the natural rebellion against society that many of us feel in our late teens and early twenties. Like when this thread was new its as much budget than anything else that keeps people from becoming fully addicted as they did when I was that age. PS – now a smoking zombie ------ that would be really really cool. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2019, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-start-smoking/350814/46 "2019-02-18T17:26:24Z")
Yup [the CDC, the shameless whores, paid off shills of the anti-tobacco agenda](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/68/wr/mm6806e1.htm?s_cid=osh-vs-mmwr-full-001) … FWIW [The RAND Corporation](https://www.medpagetoday.com/pulmonology/smoking/75448) too, of course. > [@](#): > > Teen use of electronic cigarettes was associated with both a greater likelihood of smoking traditional cigarettes and greater use of both tobacco products over time, a RAND Corporation study found. … The longitudinal analysis in the journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research revealed “robust reciprocal associations” between vaping and smoking, such that more frequent e-cigarette use at the earlier age predicted more frequent cigarette use later on, and visa versa, said RAND researcher Michael S. Dunbar, PhD. > > “We’ve seen a number of studies recently suggesting that e-cigarette use in teens increases the likelihood that they will smoke cigarettes,” Yes, better to trust [The Reason Foundation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reason_(magazine))’s spin. An organization whose trustee is David Koch and receives major funding from Phillip Morris is definitely the source for agenda-free content! In any case the comment I made is completely noncontroversial. Fewer teens experience smoking cigarettes as a first (excluding secondhand) tobacco experience now than did in 2006 and many many more have vaping as their first (direct) tobacco experience. Those who do end up smoking cigarettes as older teens and young adults now much more commonly first experienced vaping compared to 2006. Given that teen vaping really only billowed in popularity over the past five years, at a time that the rates of teens taking up smoking tobacco was pretty much getting down to its butts (such a drag), that is a mere statement of fact. Smoking is less a marker of cool kid now than it was in 2006, but in some circles vaping now is. Fewer start smoking to look cool than they did then. Do you really question that? The progression to smoking is coming later more commonly. Maybe they are starting to smoke to wean themselves off of their vaping addiction? 🙂 Seriously though, of course becoming addicted to nicotine early increases the likelihood of smoking later. And I would be interested in hearing from those who started vaping and who now smoke as to how that process happened. **kopek** yes it is true nationally, but it a very recent thing. Not sure we will have many on this board as it is mostly among those who started (with e-cigs) since its explosion in 2014 and who are now maybe 18 to 21. Not our big demographic. ---
**Author:** ![Turble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8dc957/32.png) [@Turble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Turble)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2019, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-start-smoking/350814/47 "2019-02-18T18:30:07Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > In any case the comment I made is completely noncontroversial. > And I would be interested in hearing from those who started vaping and who now smoke as to how that process happened. Like I said, I’m sure you can find plenty of anti-tobacco agenda-driven organizations to quote. Want to bash this one? [Young People’s Use of E-Cigarettes across the United Kingdom: Findings from Five Surveys 2015-2017.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28850065) > [@](#): > > …most e-cigarette experimentation does not turn into regular use, and levels of regular use in young people who have never smoked remain very low. I maintain that the important truth is “From a public health perspective, a situation in which 20 percent of high school students are vaping while 8 percent are smoking is vastly preferable to a situation in which 0 percent are vaping and 29 percent are smoking (as the NYTS found in 1999).” Good luck on your search for kids who vaped and chose to switch to stinky, expensive cigarettes. ---
**Author:** ![Thylacine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thylacine/32/1143_2.png) [@Thylacine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thylacine)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2019, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-start-smoking/350814/48 "2019-02-18T18:52:00Z")
I was always surrounded by smoke at home and in the car, my father even smoked a pipe while flying us around in his little cessna. The first cigarette I tried was out of a pack he left behind when he left my mother. It felt normal unlike smokeless places. I suspect I thought he may come home to punish me or something. I was the first at my primary school so therefore cool by definition. I stole packs from my mother and spread them around until half my grade were with me behind the shelter sheds. Once old enough (15 in1980) I took a Saturday afternoon job in a milk bar (corner store type thing) which paid me in cigarettes. I gave up after my mother died of lung cancer but there were way too many years between and I live with severe COPD now. At my high school class reunion for 30years I apologised to everyone I had talked in to trying them. A good number still had the habit. ---
**Author:** ![Thylacine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thylacine/32/1143_2.png) [@Thylacine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thylacine)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2019, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-start-smoking/350814/49 "2019-02-18T19:00:54Z")
Gah, didn’t realise this was a zombie on a new track, tried to delete my irrelevance on edit but too late. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2019, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-start-smoking/350814/50 "2019-02-18T20:59:41Z")
> [@lazurm](#): > > My neighbor has a smoking girlfriend Dang, I read this as a "smoking hot girlfriend.🙁 > [@](#): > > He had always been athletic and, somehow, fell in love with a smoking woman. \*A smoking woman She carries her own kind of light She’d cough and gag once And a day that’s all wrong Looks all right And she’s addicted God knows, she’s addicted A smoking woman If she wants to light up She’s gonna light up My smoking woman\* Righteous that **Turble** is wise to the evil subterranean agendas of the CDC and other health organizations warning of vaping hazards. Just like with vaccination, they’re stealthily out to make us healthier. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2019, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-start-smoking/350814/51 "2019-02-18T23:45:46Z")
Not to be cool. Honest I started when I stopped giving a damn what people thought of me. My wife has smoked since she was 16, before we got together I would on occasion as a social thing. Still I only do like 3 or 4 a day after work, and only because I like hanging out on the back porch with her looking a stars, and birds and shit. And she’s smoking while we’re out there so I bum one. Several times a night, every night, for like 3 years. It’s part of something I enjoy. A smarter guy could work gestalt into my explanation, but I can’t. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2019, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-start-smoking/350814/52 "2019-02-19T04:22:00Z")
> [@Turble](#): > > … Good luck on your search for kids who vaped and chose to switch to stinky, expensive cigarettes. Given my job, pediatrician, it isn’t too hard. Pretty much that’s the High School smokers now. They vaped first. And still do. But better than my word for it is [actual longitudinal data](https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/26/1/34)). Kids who started out with e-cigs were roughly three times more likely to be smokers a year later than those who did not. > [@](#): > > … Longitudinal school-based survey with a baseline sample of 2338 students (9th and 10th graders, mean age 14.7 years) in Hawaii surveyed in 2013 (time 1, T1) and followed up 1 year later (time 2, T2). … Among T1 never-smokers, those who had used e-cigarettes at T1 were more likely to have smoked cigarettes at T2; for a complete-case analysis, adjusted OR=2.87 … In the meat of the article - only 2% were smokers only at the start and half of them were smokers only a year later, some became dual users. 17% of the kids vaped at the start and 20% of them were smoking too by a year later. Of smokers the vast majority also vaped and no it did not help them quit. Also of note - this study was in Hawaii where state cigarette taxes are higher than average, $3.20/pack, [5th highest](http://www.hawaiifreepress.com/ArticlesMain/tabid/56/ID/19627/How-High-Are-Cigarette-Taxes-in-Your-StatendashHawaii-Ranks-5th.aspx) cigarette tax in the United States. ---
**Author:** ![Covfefe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ee7513/32.png) [@Covfefe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Covfefe)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2019, 8:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-start-smoking/350814/53 "2019-02-19T08:29:43Z")
As a lifelong non-smoker who is sympathetic to smokers’ rights short of the point at which they’d have the right to smoke in enclosed public areas and most workplaces, this is potentially good news. Some of my fellow um, complainers who are obsessively nostalgic for the high smoking rates of the '60s and '70s have been talking doom and gloom about what vaping will do to further stamp out smoking for years. I’ve never seen it that way. Living in a cold weather city, it made sense to me that most smokers would want to supplement their habit with vaping if they were faced with the choice of that or going out into the elements. Sure, as rates declined quite a few switched to vaping and never looked back. If teens are making that transition to smoking, I’m not surprised the vast majority continue to vape as well. One thing that should be studied if this is a phenomenon is how many cigarettes are smoked in a day by these “smokers”, as there’s a bit of difference in dependence between two packs a day smokers and two per day smokers. The link in #52 doesn’t work. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2019, 8:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-start-smoking/350814/54 "2019-02-19T08:37:09Z")
I began smoking because my then-bf smoked. This was before we knew how harmful it is. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2019, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-start-smoking/350814/55 "2019-02-19T11:51:39Z")
> [@Covfefe](#): > > … The link in #52 doesn’t work. A try again. [Longitudinal study of e-cigarette use and onset of cigarette smoking among high school students in Hawaii](https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/26/1/34) ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2019, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-start-smoking/350814/57 "2019-02-19T15:35:32Z")
\*\* CHECKS ZOMBIE THREAD TO SEE IF I ALREADY POSTED TO IT IN 2006 \*\* I started smoking because I _tried_ a cigarette and lo and behold, nicotine feels really nice! I’d heard all about how you’d get hooked on them if you took it up, and the health risks, but no one had bothered to mention that nicotine is pleasant. I decided (in my 16-year-old wisdom) that this was a reasonable tradeoff – who cares if it’s habit forming, as long as it feels this nice who’d want to stop anyhow? I _quit_ about 8 years later because the truth about addiction is that you no longer get the nice feelings. You just make the craving to away for awhile. You smoke and get nothing pleasant from it (unless you count the absence of wanting your nicotine hit as “pleasant”). Wasn’t easy. Took multiple attempts. ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2019, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-start-smoking/350814/58 "2019-02-19T16:19:04Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > I started smoking because I _tried_ a cigarette and lo and behold, nicotine feels really nice! I’d heard all about how you’d get hooked on them if you took it up, and the health risks, but no one had bothered to mention that nicotine is pleasant. “People think it’s all about misery and desperation and death and all that shite, which is not to be ignored. But what they forget is the pleasure of it. Otherwise we wouldn’t do it. After all, we’re not fucking stupid. At least, we’re not that fucking stupid.” –Mark Renton _Trainspotting_ ---
**Author:** ![Ashtura](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ashtura/32/2963_2.png) [@Ashtura](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ashtura)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2019, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-start-smoking/350814/59 "2019-02-19T17:02:53Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > Inspired by the Pit thread, I’m really curious. I’m a non-smoker who never even considered trying, but I can sort of understand people who started smoking before the health warnings became unambiguously dire, and before it completely lost its “I’m cool” image. > > But… I can’t imagine anyone taking it up after, oh, about 1980. And yet I see lots of people in their 20s who smoke. What is the appeal? I imagine most of them are kids. And kids are dumb. I am bewildered how anyone these days would start as a full-blown adult whose brain is fully formed (we’ll say 26+). ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2019, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-start-smoking/350814/60 "2019-02-19T17:58:04Z")
I’ve always thought it had to do with 3 things: 1. Presence/absence of positive or negative role models. 2. Cultural portrayal as cool, or at least accepted. 3. Attempts to look cool, usually by the opposite sex. I never smoked because of 1 and 3. One was the constant contrast between my non-smoking parents and my grandmother who smoked 2 packs a day. Nothing like having your grandmother bake you cookies that taste great at her house, but taste like an ashtray once you get them home. Several of my friends’ parents smoked, and I noticed that I stank after being at their houses. As for #3, most of the girls I was interested in didn’t smoke, and usually opined about how nasty it was. I had friends who had the opposite- they had parents who smoked and ran in circles where smoking was common, and you looked dorky if you didn’t, by girls and boys. So they smoked, and for the most part, remain smokers. We all grew up in an era where the heroes in the old movies smoked constantly, and most of the heroes in the new movies did as well, so that was constant. ---
**Author:** ![Pithily\_Effusive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pithily_effusive/32/252_2.png) [@Pithily\_Effusive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pithily_Effusive)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2019, 8:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-start-smoking/350814/61 "2019-02-20T08:17:40Z")
I have one you haven’t considered. It’s not psychological. It’s not nature or nurture. It’s: My family grows tobacco. I’ve been working with tobacco since I was eight years old. I smoke because I like to smoke tobacco. I don’t quit because I don’t want to quit. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-start-smoking/350814.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-start-smoking/350814.md?page=4)