If it’s not related to rebelliousness, smoking is strongly associated with socialites, elegant people or, to the other extreme, vicious bums who always need to keep their hands busy to avoid getting themselves into trouble. Smoking has been seen as state-of-the art, unhealthy, elegant, miserable, courageous, weak, and the list of paradoxes related to smoking can continue endlessly.
Over the recent years, efforts have been made to lower the rates of smoking in individuals. Studies have shown its irreversible effects on skin, lungs, throat and everything that slowly becomes affected when we indulge ourselves increasingly in the habit of smoking.
On the other hand, smoking has a very long history of controversy, acceptance, promotion, banning but beyond all that remains the undeniable pleasure of holding a cigarette in your hand and enjoying your moment of peace and serenity.
According to a new study, a large number of young American women started the so called light-smoking or social smoking. Researchers from the University of Texas at Austin were intrigued after analyzing other pieces of research that noted an increase in casual smoking, in recent years. To strengthen their conclusions, they analyzed a sample of 9.780 women aged between 18 and 25.
Researchers asked the women if they had smoked part or all of a cigarette in the past month. Those who gave a positive answer were classified as smokers while those who hadn’t but had smoked previously, were considered “former” smokers.
Further research and analysis has made scientists conclude that heavy smoking has seen a significant decrease, with no more than 27% of the entire group of study still keeping the pace with regular and heavy smoking. On the other hand, a significant increase has been observed in women who were classified as “light smokers”. 62% of the current smokers have something close to 6 cigarettes a day. There is a kind of casual smoking, oftentimes referred to as “only smoking when drunk”, which has become predominant because of its misperceived lack of health effects.
Almost 20% of all women in the study and more than 60% of the current smokers were defined as very light smokers, according to the research.
The recent results reveal that public health efforts should be directed towards the very light smokers who should be notified on the potential threats that this seemingly inoffensive habit poses over their health. People in this group are likely to refuse admitting they are actual smokers but they are also more likely to recognize the high risks in smoking, if accurately exposed to them. Social smoking may be cool and lead to interaction but is nevertheless dangerous and people must become aware of that.
