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Solutions for the Choice of my Addiction

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In 1964, a report from the US Surgeon General announced a causal relationship between cigarette smoking and lung cancer, following the Lalonde report (1974) which defined smoking as an individual risk behavior. Thereafter, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) also joined this bold move and included tobacco dependence in its third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III). Moreover, the US Surgeon General finally declared that cigarette smoking is an addiction in their 1988 report. However, there are still many people who have been diagnosed with cardiovascular diseases due to tobacco and/or nicotine dependence and they ultimately reduce their life expectancy because of this addiction. Why are …show more content…

Because of the shortcomings the first approach had, the population-based approach was developed in response to these problems. Geoffrey Rose, a British physician, came up with this concept and its basic premise is putting more importance to tobacco control. According to his approach, it is vital to recognize that the causes of an individual of getting addicted to smoking are distinct from the causes of groups of people become cigarette addicts. His suggestion of a new perspective on how to look at the present addiction problem, specifically cigarette addiction, give rise to a different approach to develop a new intervention strategy to deal with smoking prevention and cessation. The strong point of the approach is that it brings massive environmental programs to be involved. Making appropriate policy changes or community members’ attempt to change social norms of addictive behavior are both excellent examples of such application.

Specifically, rendering smoking behavior as socially less acceptable, less desirable, and less common is a way to use population-based reduction program to cause an increase in smoking cessation rates. For instance, smoke-free workplaces did set up a situation where the incidence of smoking can be reduced, dropping down consumption rate to 3.1 cigarettes per day (Fichtenberg & Glantz, 2002). Such total

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