Blog #95--How NOT to Stop Someone from Smoking

I smoked for 32 years, and I have suffered from an increasingly worse case of emphysema in the 18 years since. One might think I now evangelize the need for the whole world to stop smoking, but that is not the case. I’m not even sure I know a sure-fire way to stop someone from smoking.

I have studied smokers all my life. My whole family smoked, so I had both an environmental addiction from breathing in smoke-filled rooms and a gene that gave me an inner attraction to smoking. Being a keen observer of life around me, I found myself learning the personality types of people who smoke. I could predict with at least 75% accuracy who would smoke.

I live near a university campus, and researchers there once asked smokers to volunteer for a study that would help them learn more about smokers. I applied, adding that I had been a student of the subject and learned things that might help them. However, I added the proviso that, if their real purpose was to find out how to stop people from smoking, then I didn’t wish to participate. I was never contacted, proving their initial advertising was misleading at best.

I can understand why some people are adamant against smoking and smokers. Those with asthma have major breathing problems when smoke of any kind is in the air around them. Emphysema causes the same problem, and it is worse than I imagined when I was healthy. If someone with asthma or emphysema asked me politely to not smoke around them, I would comply. Of course, asking nicely is relatively rare.

I also know that smoke is polarized and attracted toward those who don’t smoke. If you place a burning cigarette an equal distance between a smoker and nonsmoker, the smoke wafting into the air tends to move toward the nonsmoker in many cases. The smell alone bothers many, and it tends to stay on clothes, drapes, furniture and the like for an extended period. While some research suggests nonsmokers can develop lung cancer secondarily from inhaling others’ smoke, the lingering smell alone is likely not the cause of illnesses.

Smokers respond in a variety of ways to attempts to stop them from smoking. If the nonsmoker has a selfish motivation for demanding a cessation of smoking, many smokers become more committed to the habit. They don’t want to submit to someone else’s selfishness. They may be just as selfish in their smoking habits, but they don’t want others telling them how to live their lives. This tendency is made worse by the addiction smokers have to nicotine found naturally in tobacco.

Because of this addiction, even a sincere effort to express concern for the smoker’s welfare may fall on deaf ears. It can be difficult to free oneself from this addiction. Loving efforts to show support and encouragement can help at times, but even then the smoker must be committed to stop on his own. Both the left and right brain halves must agree to stop at the same time, and this is not something that can be forced.

In my book “It’s a Secret, So Pass It On: a Toolbox For Life,” I describe a person I know who started smoking simply because selfish individuals were nagging smokers to stop. He said he didn’t want these selfish people to win, so he started smoking to defy them. I understand that concept well, because my natural reaction to such nagging was exactly the same. Only in my case, I continued smoking for at least 2 years after I started having health problems. I am a direct, dominant person, so I don’t prefer to follow followers. I couldn’t stop until my health needs outweighed my need to prevent followers from winning. Some people never stop smoking for the same reason.

Fearful people who used to smoke tended to give it up quickly once they learned about the adverse effects from smoking, but many dominant people continued. After all, nicotine actually reduces aggression in people with Type A personalities. I certainly found this to be true for me. Smoking seemed especially helpful when I encountered difficult life problems. I could calm down and think better after smoking a cigarette.

This is one of the true ironies of the smoking/nonsmoking dynamic. Submissive followers who don’t smoke also tend to fear dominant people, assuming they might try to dominate them. By trying to force them to stop smoking, nonsmokers actually prevent dominant smokers from reducing their aggression via smoking. This might result in the opposite of what submissive people want.

Nagging and legal restrictions don’t always work. Neither do scare tactics. In fact, some people smoke simply to test their resolve and overcome their fears. Yet many advertisements try to scare smokers into quitting by showing them internal and external damage created via long-term smoking. Those who create the ads are fearful of these physical changes, but many smokers are not.

All of us are attracted to items that will help us regain a balance between the opposite energies within us. Some people find that balance through smoking. For instance, in my observation more of those born under the signs of Gemini and Virgo tend to smoke than some other signs. They are highly energized people, so nicotine might be necessary to calm them down when their energy levels get too high. If we as a civilization were to find a suitable substitute for tobacco that could do the same thing without causing health problems, these folks might find it easier to avoid the smoking habit.

Smoking may be a bad habit that can lead to health problems and sometimes death, but as long as it is legal for farmers to grow tobacco and companies to produce tobacco products, smokers have a right to engage their habit. Unknown to much of the general public, I understand tobacco companies were actually allowed to increase the percentage of nicotine in their products after being forced to pay out billions of dollars in punitive damages for the problems their products and misleading advertising produced. Those who continued to smoke after these legal judgments became even more addicted to smoking products.

Instead of blaming smokers or punishing them, it might be more helpful to forgive and accept them. Obviously, some nonsmokers can’t do this, but some smokers can’t help themselves either. Both sides need a little loving kindness and understanding. Perhaps then a compromise solution can be discovered.

There is no guaranteed solution to this problem without cooperation from and consideration for all the different types of people who live on Earth. No matter how many people stop smoking, there will likely never be a time when everyone is free of the habit. If there are no cigarettes, cigars, pipe tobacco, chewing tobacco or snuff available, a few people will start smoking porous sticks, bamboo threads, or other items that allow one to inhale and exhale smoke. And the more others try to force them to stop, the more determined they will be to continue.

Safe cigarettes may be an answer for smokers. The problem then is getting selfish nonsmokers to accept the rights of others to be different than them. In the long run, that is as big a problem as smoking, in my opinion.

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