Abstract
Tobacco policy has assumed center stage in recent years. A product responsible for more than 400,000 premature deaths annually in the United States alone clearly raises a serious public health concern. Yet in society there is a strong presumption that freedom of choice to engage in risky activities ought to be protected from paternalistic regulation. As a consequence, it does not follow inexorably that public health concerns require governmental action (Rabin & Sugarman 2001). Perhaps the clearest evidence in support of this proposition is the lack of any discernible current support for an absolute prohibition on the sale and consumption of tobacco products. Correspondingly, until very recently, the tobacco industry relied, with unbroken success, on this same personal responsibility theme in the judicial forum as the foundation of its defense to smokers' compensation lawsuits. Along with small employers, the strongest opponents of restrictions on smoking in public places have been bar and restaurant owners. Despite such opposition, some recent state legislation and local ordinances have banned smoking in restaurants and required strict ventilation systems in bars (Hendry & Shucksmith 1998).
Smoking rates amongst young people demonstrate a hard core of smokers resistant to every form of media campaign, for example. Information campaigns about HIV are shown to raise knowledge levels, yet risky sexual behaviours are still commonplace. Drug culture seems to embed itself more firmly among youth whether health promoters advocate ‘say no’ strategies or seek a harm-minimization approach. As information approaches have been shown to fail in terms of transforming behaviour, health promotion has turned more and more to methods which seek to develop skills or to impart strategies that can be used by young people. The emphasis of much such work is on individuals accepting personal responsibility for their health and having both the knowledge and skills to make decisions appropriately. Viewing smoking as a symptom of affliction, rather than a cultural practice or individual lifestyle choice, transforms the political landscape of tobacco use (Snell 2005). The move to refigure smokers as powerless victims of an addictive drug does not remove the debate from the realm of ethical and moral judgment. Rather, it widens the scope of normalization and imbues it with the authority and familiar appeal of medical discourse. True, the discourse of nicotine addiction constructs addicted smokers as sick, not bad, but it assumes that the only way to live a meaningful, productive, and happy life is to adopt a healthy nonsmoking lifestyle, a lifestyle that consists of much more than abstinence from nicotine. Smokers learn to maintain a constant level of nicotine in their blood. They are sensitive to tiny variations in dose, and if given milder cigarettes will inhale more deeply to achieve their preferred concentration. Anti-smoking texts portray this as an entirely unfortunate reaction, reducing the potential benefits of low-tar brands. For them, the finely tuned and specialized corporeality of the smoker is a corruption of the body's natural state of organic and self-contained integrity (Brodie & Redfield 2002).
The smoker's connection with the cigarette and her responses to nicotine appear as increases in the range of the body's powers, that is, the body's capacity to affect and be affected. In addition to the delicate manipulation of drug levels are the sensory and aesthetic stimulations of smoke in the airways, object in the mouth, and movement of the hand. The actions and reactions of smoking can be read as a testimony to the adaptability and sensitivity of a body that can actively produce and experience pleasure through all sorts of connections, flows, and intensities, including regulated flows of toxins (Klein 1993). As smoking does not have the obviously life-disrupting and socially harmful consequences of other addictions, most texts give a dominant role to physical health in their production of tobacco use as a major social issue. But for most smokers the seriously deleterious medical consequences of their habit lie in the future, while its rewards are experienced in the present. Hence anti-smoking material highlights links between the remembered past, present behavior, and the anticipated future, constructing a unidirectional and linear notion of time. Through its deployment of the notion of risk, anti-smoking discourse tends to negate the gratifications of the present in favor of the dangers of the future. Mainstream public health literature is less metaphorical in its use of temporal explanations. It depends explicitly on the truth of the connection between smoking and future ill health, aiming to make the probable and the possible real enough to motivate behavior change. While accepting that nicotine addiction is a central aspect of smoking, this literature downplays its power, placing faith in the ability of education and awareness to provide the resolve needed to quit (Brigden & De Beyer 2003). The paper helped in analyzing why students are smoking. The paper made use of Qualitative methods. Qualitative method thrives on understanding data through giving emphasis on determining people’s words and actions. Qualitative method has an orientation that it should gather data that can be acquired through quantitative methods. In qualitative research, the researcher creates a natural setting which he/she can use to understand a phenomenon of interest.
References
Brigden, L & De Beyer, J (eds.) 2003, Tobacco control policy:
Strategies, successes, and setbacks, World Bank, Washington, DC.
Brodie, J & Redfield, M (eds.) 2002, High anxieties: Cultural
studies in addiction, University of California Press, Berkeley,
CA.
Hendry, LB & Shucksmith, J 1998, Health issues and adolescents:
Growing up, speaking out, Routledge, London.
Klein, R 1993, Cigarettes are sublime, Duke University Press,
Durham, NC.
Rabin, RL & Sugarman, SD 2001, Regulating tobacco, Oxford
University Press, New York.
Snell, C 2005, Peddling poison: The tobacco industry and kids,
Praeger, Westport, CT.
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