The result of the many campaigns that advised people to stop smoking and warned them against the dangers cigarettes were posing to their health is that tobacco is not in the trend anymore and more people are quitting smoking, according to a new study.
A team of researchers from the University of California realized that the more the smoking trend declined, the more people were also likely to quit or cut back on cigarettes.
The study is particularly important because it challenges the idea of harm reduction, which says that the remaining smokers will be less willing to quit while the smoking trend declines. Instead, the experts noticed the opposite.
“The fact that the smoking population is softening has important implications for public health policy. These results suggest that current tobacco control policies have been leading to softening of the smoking population without the need to promote new recreational nicotine products like e-cigarettes,” stated Stanton A. Glantz, who is one of the authors of the study.
Their findings revealed that as the population that smoked diminished by 1 percent, the number of smokers who softened on cigarettes was up by 0.6 percent in the Unites States. They also came to the conclusion that the number of cigarettes people smoked every day decreased by 0.32 percent among the existing smokers.
The researchers say that these numbers are significant and that there is no need to promote e-cigarettes for smokers because peopleare quitting thanks to the policies and interventions that have been implemented throughout the years.
Therefore, it is enough to continue the tobacco control policies and the number of smokers will most likely continue to drop.
More people understand how much harm they are doing to their health by smoking and this habit is no longer regarded as “cool”, especially when you have to stand outside the restaurant or any other building, even when it’s freezing cold outside, just to puff your cigarette.