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Anyone who has ever tried smoking probably remembers that first cigarette vividly. You will cough a lot. It’s not that easy to learn to smoke but a lot harder to stop once started.
Can you become a daily smoker after trying just one cigarette? Apparently so. For every five people who try the first cigarette, at least three will go on to develop a daily habit, a new study has found. According to a study published in the journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research, two-thirds of people who experimented with cigarettes later became more frequent smokers, even if this was only temporary.
The authors from the Queen Mary University of London said the study showed “the remarkable hold that cigarettes can establish after a single experience”. This contrasts with new e-cigarettes where they say one-off experimenters are less likely to become regular “vapers”, the authors said.
Researchers scoured global databases for studies examining cigarette experimentation and smoking habits, including research from the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Data from eight surveys – with information on more than 215,000 people – was included for analysis. The team found that 60 per cent of respondents had said they had ever tried a cigarette, and among those, 69 per cent said they had progressed to daily smoking. Lead researcher Professor Peter Hajek, from Queen Mary, said: “This is the first time that the remarkable hold that cigarettes can establish after a single experience has been documented from such a large set of data. “We’ve found that the conversion rate from ‘first-time smoker’ to ‘daily smoker’ is surprisingly high, which helps confirm the importance of preventing cigarette experimentation in the first place.
Try not your first cigarette.
Source: The Week Magazine
