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Social Smoking: Implications for Public Health, Clinical Practice, and Intervention Research (PDF) 

Conclusion

Tobacco industry research indicates that social smoking includes stable patterns of chronic low-level consumption and comprises about one quarter of all smokers (and growing) of varying age, ethnicity, SES, and educational background. More important, industry research suggests that social smokers will probably not respond to current cessation strategies that are based on personal health risk and treatment of nicotine addiction. Social smokers may be more responsive to messages focused on the dangers associated with their secondhand smoke.

Given the increasing prevalence of nondaily smoking, there is a need for more assessments of smokingcessation programs designed to identify and treat these smokers. In the absence of any formal clinical trial, we propose that based on the tobacco industry’s extensive marketing research, clinicians can: (1) identify social smoking behavior by asking patients focused clinical questions that detect social smoking, such as Have you smoked any cigarettes or used any tobacco products in the past month? as opposed to Are you a smoker? (2) recognize that pharmacotherapy, support groups, and cognitive– behavioral therapy have not yet been proven to be effective in this population, (3) emphasize the dangers of secondhand smoke, (4) emphasize separating tobacco use from social activities such as attending bars or parties, and (5) support personal or societal smoke free policies which prevent tobacco use in social settings, to decrease the social acceptability of smoking, and to facilitate self-motivated cessation. Counseling that is tailored to address social cues or social contexts of smoking may be useful to treat social smokers. Educating healthcare professionals to better counsel their patients may improve cessation rates and tobaccorelated health outcomes.

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