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counsel smokers is educate diem regarding what is actually involved in smoking behavior and explain 

 to them that diey can choose to successfully stop widiout sophisticated treatment. Calling smoking 

 an addiction provides some smokers a convenient, external excuse, an easy out if you will, for not 

 initiating abstention or for giving up too easily at the flrst sign of discomfort. Many individuals who 

 want to continue smoking have already created the personal myth that they are addicted, thereby 

 feeling overwhelmed and excusing themselves for not trying to stop or persevering in the effort. 

 Officially endorsing that myth perpetuates and exacerbates this situation. They are now officially 

 forgiven their failure. 



Perhaps of greater importance is the effect on young people of the message that smoking is 

 just like heroin and cocaine. Every day they see smokers who are productive, upright citizens and 

 who fulfill their responsibilities. They also see adults giving up smoking without great difficulty, 

 hospitalization or lifelong therapeutic support. To tell these people that smoking crack cocaine or 

 taking heroin will not effect them in a different way than smoking cigarettes encourages 

 experimentation with these hard drugs. Such experimentation, as we all know, often leads to 

 disastrous results. 



Does the addiction label frighten away potential smokers? Actually, it makes cigarettes more 

 controversial and creates, in certain groups, an enticement to defy authority by smoking, or to treat 

 smoking as a rite of passage into adulthood. I know of no adolescent who abstains from alcohol 

 because it is an addicting substance (and that addiction is real!); I do know many who drink to defy 

 audiorify or prove they are adults. (They also drink to get intoxicated.) For some, designating 

 cigarettes as an addicting substance could well have a result opposite to the one desired. 



