It is obvious that there is a global movement to stamp out smokers.
Smoking indoors in commercial structures and public transport have almost been fully banned, smoking areas are ever more limited, and for every possible private enough smoking corner a smoker can find, it is usually plastered with large ‘NO SMOKING’ signs. Perhaps now one requires government permits to build private structures where you can smoke… not only is it a health hazard apparently, it’s a safety hazard.
There are many perfect, rational reasons for banning smokers, we know the reasons all too well. And no one can argue that any smoker should not remain on the path of eventually quitting smoking. However, smokers have no real representation, non-smokers hardly understand them — there are too many mysteries and myths that shroud the Smoker, the unwanted person on the periphery of the public. Why on earth would anyone ingest toxic smoke? - a non-smoking passerby must frequently ask silently, sometimes with a glare of contempt and disgust…
Beyond that judgment, I doubt most non-smokers really research why smokers are the way they are. Some interesting statistics here to start with: most of those who have PTSD – smoke. 53+% of bipolar people smoke, 70-80% of schizophrenic people smoke.
Bipolar smokers’ percentage statistics source:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010440X1100109X
Schizophrenic smokers’ percentage statistics source:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8687814/
Most of such demographics have apparent Vagus nerve damage from chronic or sudden trauma. And individuals in this world are traumatized daily, whether directly or via more complex conditioning.
Vagus Nerves’ descriptions source:
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/22279-vagus-nerve
“The Vagus nerve, also known as the vagal nerves, are the main nerves of your parasympathetic nervous system. This system controls specific body functions such as your digestion, heart rate and immune system. These functions are involuntary, meaning you can’t consciously control them.”
“(The) Vagus nerves are the longest cranial nerve, running from your brain to your large intestine. Your left Vagus nerve travels down the left side of your body. The right Vagus nerve travels down the right side of your body.
“Vagus” is the Latin word for wandering. Your vagal nerves take a long, winding course through your body. They exit from your medulla oblongata in your lower brainstem. Then, the nerves pass through or connect with your:
Neck (between your carotid artery and jugular vein)
Chest (thorax)
Heart
Lungs
Abdomen and digestive tract”
The reality is Smoking was popularized during times of war, World War 1 and World War 2 had brought global scales of severe trauma. It is also heavily used in highly repressive and oppressive societies, where so much of one’s pain and bitterness would have to be internalized. Smoking cigarettes was most popular in World War 2. Smoking was among “… habits the common soldiers picked up on the battlefield… were brought home after the war’s end… WWII soldiers used cigarettes similarly to their WWI forbearers, smoking to escape the stress of battle and steady their nerves. Soldiers had been rationed 4 cigarettes a day during WWI.”
WW2 prevalence of smoking descriptions source:
https://tobacco.stanford.edu/cigarettes/war-aviation/world-war-ii/#:~:text=Thus%2C%20habits%20the%20common%20soldiers,cigarettes%20a%20day%20during%20WWI.
I am definitely not glorifying smoking, but I am explaining it – there is something in the act of smoking that allows one to quiet down one’s thoughts, get a grip, focus, and own and control and convert a moment of anxiety/ boredom/ stress. It is a control for the mood and impulses associated with stress and boredom, to smooth over the jagged edges of unpleasant feelings that have to be repressed due to simply not being able to be in the flow of things, or not being congruent with one’s environment. At best smokers are associated with the intellectual, perhaps the standoffish, and at some point in the past, ‘cool’ for being the outcast and the ones who tend to think before they speak – until they of course have a nicotine fit and stink up the area with their smoking I guess. And the latter is what they are truly recognized for now, because it is so difficult to be a smoker these days.
Smokers understand the frustrations and concerns about their smoking, that are incessantly repeated to them. But likely most of society doesn’t understand what they are going through and how people can be different. Just because someone can choose to try to quit cigarettes, doesn't mean they can choose to successfully quit. Many smokers have attempted to quit multiple times, but their situation and environment and conditions have never been optimal enough to support this. Just because someone started smoking doesn't mean they always had the other option to choose not to. What does that mean? As an example, some teenagers who suffered from PTSD from all the bullying at school, while suffering inadequate emotional support started smoking as a result of that. Smokers wouldn’t call that a choice, they didn’t choose to be hurt so damn bad that they needed to smoke to self-censor and continue to be functional to still succeed at adulthood. And does psychiatry and therapy truly replace the effect that is needed from the act of smoking for schizophrenic, bipolar and PTSD patients who are smokers - is that truly a choice or an underlying disability?
Parents who are criticized for smoking in front of their child, but are keeping it functional in every other way are still inherently better than parents who are Narcissistic or OCD, or has completely unmanaged PTSD, or BPD, psychopathic, sociopathic or is financially dependent on others or poor. Arguably these things hurt a child more, the difference is the latter seems more normal (normalized) in society’s view, true child abuse is a comparatively very silent epidemic.
Again, going back to the smoker’s experience, it renders one more functional and patient and controlled, and without it temper tantrums, involuntary responses and reactions could erupt and disrupt entire routines… and plans. Without it, personally I would have made terrible mistakes in my 20s without its mediation between my impulses and logic. As of now there has been no psychiatric drug that has been an effective replacement… The ones that barely work such as Chantix/ Champix makes you hate the taste, and additionally feel sick, including cases where one ingests other medications that are incompatible.
So smokers ask: What would be the effective replacement? Does our environment, work schedules allow unlimited commitment of time and resources to say spa therapies that could relax the Vagus nerve? Can our lives be devoid of stresses where it would no longer be impacted? Can we truly live trauma-free lives – conditions that would never necessitate the urge to smoke?
To stamp out smokers without a way for their root condition to be resolved, is simply abusive. Would society rather they go through the throes of withdrawals, and lose their jobs… simply get hauled into psych wards that would break their confidence and give them additional reasons to want to revert to the habit? (In such places one is restrained and no effective medication for such things is guaranteed.)
Are we truly devoting enough, appropriate resources to help smokers? Or are we simply making their lives worse and hope they would just disappear into the peripheral shrouds of humanity? – It seems to most non-smokers that the justification simply is if they smoke and pollute the air they are simply a hazard to society that needs to be stamped out regardless of their humanity.
Personally, I am on the road to quit smoking, I just wanted people to know why it’s difficult.
