Cigarettes are the only drug type substance people get hooked on that starts with a horrible experience. You do heroine or wine coolers and anything in between and you’re like “dude, this is AWESOME” or at least “ya, this is giving me what I want enough to keep doing this”, but with smoking it’s horrible for everyone. You cough, it hurts – everyone reports bad first try’s, yet they are stupid enough to force themselves to get hooked and dependent on this expensive life shortening and quality-of-life decreasing product. Good one…idiots.

According to the investigators, 28 percent of the study participants smoked at least one cigarette a day, around 3 percent said they were ex-smokers, and 68 percent had never smoked.

The smokers had significantly lower intelligence test scores than non-smokers, and this remained true even after the researchers accounted for socioeconomic status as measured by how many years of formal education a recruit’s father had completed.

The average IQ for non-smokers was about 101, while it was 94 for men who had started smoking before entering the military. IQ steadily dropped as the number of cigarettes smoked increased, from 98 for people who smoked one to five cigarettes daily to 90 for those who smoked more than a pack a day. IQ scores from 84 to 116 are considered to indicate average intelligence.

Recruits aren’t allowed to smoke while intelligence tests are administered, the researchers note, so it’s possible that withdrawal symptoms might affect smokers’ scores. To address this issue, they also looked at IQ scores for men who were non-smokers when they were 18 but started smoking during their military service. These men also scored lower than never-smokers (97 points, on average), “indicating that nicotine withdrawal was probably not the cause of the difference,” the researchers say.

The researchers also compared IQs for 70 pairs of brothers in the group in which one brother smoked and the other did not. Again, average IQs for the non-smoking sibling were higher than for the smokers.

This French anti-smoking ad campaign (whats next? German anti-bratwurst commercials?) says the message nicely..

Shocking Anti-Smoking Ads Show Kids in Sexual Positions…

A provocative anti-smoking ad campaign featuring teens in a subservient sexual position has sparked a storm of controversy in France, with the country’s family minister calling Wednesday for the advertisements to be banned.

The ad, sponsored by the Association for Nonsmokers’ Rights, features an adolescent who could be construed to be performing oral sex on a man in a suit, except the teen has a cigarette in his mouth. A caption reads, “Smoking means being a slave to tobacco.” There are two other ads in the same vein, one featuring a teenage girl.

The leader of the organization behind the campaign acknowledged the ads were meant to shock, and said such provocative campaigns were the only way to reach young people.

“Traditional advertisements targeting teens don’t affect them. Talking about issues of health, illness or even death, they don’t get it,” the group’s director, Remi Parola, told The Associated Press in an interview. “However, when we talk about submission and dependence, they listen.”

Parola insisted the ads — developed pro-bono by the BBDP & Fils advertising agency — were not really about sex at all.

“The visuals have a sexual connotation, that I can’t deny, but it’s really a way to start a discussion with young people to get them to understand the dangers of smoking.”

The summary: The brain of an addicted smoker treats nicotine as if it is essential for survival. Genetic traits may predispose some smokers to stronger addiction. Most smokers try to quit unaided, resulting in a high failure rate.

If you smoke, no one needs to tell you how bad it is. So why haven’t you quit? Why hasn’t everyone?

Because smoking feels good. It stimulates and focuses the mind at the same time that it soothes and satisfies. The concentrated dose of nicotine in a drag off a cigarette triggers an immediate flood of dopamine and other neurochemicals that wash over the brain’s pleasure centers. Inhaling tobacco smoke is the quickest, most efficient way to get nicotine to the brain.

“I completely understand why you wouldn’t want to give it up,” said Dr. David Abrams, an addiction researcher at the National Institutes of Health. “It’s more difficult to get off nicotine than heroin or cocaine.”

Smoking “hijacks” the reward systems in the brain that drive you to seek food, water and sex, Dr. Abrams explained, driving you to seek nicotine with the same urgency. “Your brain thinks that this has to do with survival of the species,” he said.