Social Norm Question - Cigarette Smoking as a 'habit'

[disobey_the_norm]

I got thinking today as I lit up for the first time today "man this is a bad habit, I need to give these up" and got thinking. Everytime I see or hear or hear about a anti-smoking person exercising their holier than thou beliefs it's always them telling the smoker that it's a bad habit they have.

Why is this exactly? It's an addiction really (well in most cases) so why don't they say "that's a bad addiction you have there" ??

I feel addiction is more emotive and would actually be better as a tool for persuasion(sp). So I'm just wondering why you think it is this way.

I'm assuming here too, I accept that some people may actually say it, it's just that I've never encountered it personally and in films too.

It's nearly as if they are sugar coating it. A habit is a lot of things and everyone has them, an addition is different so do people think they only have a smoking habit and it can be easily broken? Or is it too invasive to point out to someone?

[None Other]

Probably because the general public equate addiction with drugs, and smoking is still socially acceptibal enough to pretend that its a habbit. Mabe its simmilar how people drink themselves stupid but claim not to "do drugs". Just societys way of distinguishing acceptibal vices from unacceptibal ones.

because the habit of having a cigarette after you eat dinner, or when something that makes you mad comes up, or every hour on your break from work you smoke a cigarette - the fact that you usually have a cigarette is what triggers the cravings, and makes it hard for people to quit.

Originally Posted by alooha from hell

because the habit of having a cigarette after you eat dinner, or when something that makes you mad comes up, or every hour on your break from work you smoke a cigarette - the fact that you usually have a cigarette is what triggers the cravings, and makes it hard for people to quit.

In most cases [in studies I cannot directly link you to, apologies] the smoker is in fact habitually smoking, rather than weakening under an addiction. Every time they smoke a cigarette, they choose to ignore the truth of their habit. The smoker who smokes a few packs a day has applied smoking a cigarette to their daily lives.

Smoking one in the morning with breakfast or coffee, smoking one after a stressful experience, smoking one in the car, listening to certain music and smoking, smoking one last one before bedtime, the entire routine is repeated daily. So when people say to a smoker "My, that's a bad habit you have there," they are using the correct term.

The word addiction has connotations that the addict is not to blame. So to say to a smoke "that's a bad addiction you have there" is to express pity, but no real hope that they could stop. To call it a habit suggests that it is something the smoker has control over, and so they can stop if they want to. This is (for the most part) true, so this is, presumably, why people use the word habit.