Nicotine is Addictive: The Issue of Free Choice
Abstract
The issue of whether nicotine should be regarded as addictive is important because it relates to the way that social, legal and medical institutions treat smokers and those with smoking-related diseases. The core feature of addiction is compulsion or inability to exercise free choice. Lack of free choice is evidenced by inconsistency between sincerely expressed desire and actual behaviour and by behaviour that violates the principle of ‘bounded rationality’. On both of these criteria, smoking behaviour appears to operate under compulsion rather than free choice. For example, a majority of smokers shows evidence of sincerely wishing they could stop but they fail to do so when they try. Also, factors associated with success of attempts to stop appear to be unrelated to the perceived costs and benefits of smoking but are related to dependence mechanisms.
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Enjoyment of smoking, leading to 'wanting' to smoke, does not appear to be a major factor in relapse.
“Enjoyment of smoking, leading to 'wanting' to smoke does not appear to be a major factor in relapse (31),”
From The Multiple Facets of Cigarette Addiction and What They Mean for Encouraging and Helping Smokers to Stop (2009) · cites this paper as [31]
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- Authors
- West, R.
- Affiliations
- St George's, University of London (GB)
- Corresponding author
- West, R.
- ORCID
- West, R.
- Venue
- Effects of Nicotine on Biological Systems II
- Publisher
- Birkhäuser Basel
- Published
- 1995
- Pages
- 265-272
- OpenAlex
- W1843095070
- Cited by
- 7
- References
- 23
- Citations by year
- 2013: 1
- FWCI
- 2.91
- Type
- book chapter
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Birkhäuser Basel eBooks (publishedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Physiology › Smoking Behavior and Cessation
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Epidemiology › Substance Abuse Treatment and Outcomes
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Applied Psychology › Behavioral Health and Interventions
- Keywords
- nicotine dependence, free will, compulsive behavior, smoking behavior, smoking cessation, bounded rationality, smoking-related diseases, tobacco control
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