Old Habits Die Hard: Why do people still choose to smoke? OUIL 501 Context of Practice Joe Boyd Cigarettes were responsible for more than 6 million deaths in 2011 in the European region of the World Health Organisation (Bonas 2014). Despite this death toll there are around 13.7 million adults in the UK who still smoke. Research has shown that the majority of smokers start the habit in their teens and continue into adulthood when they are unable to break the addiction. The obvious reason for people to continue smoking might seem to be their addiction to nicotine, but there are many other factors that encourage people to start smoking and continue smoking. These include social and cultural influences as well as psychological factors such as identity. The concept of identity provides a useful framework for understanding why people still choose to smoke. Our identity may be viewed as an internal story that we develop about ourselves but it is related to what we actually do. For example adolescents fashion identity through their actions, perhaps by being a smoker or by being a non-smoker, so that ʻEveryone is instantiated as a particular identity through the way they comport themselvesʼ (Plumridge, Fitzgerald & Abel, 2002 page 169). In this essay I will first discuss a brief history of how smoking has been viewed, promoted and dissuaded through the last century. I will also consider the reasons people choose to take up smoking, continue smoking and how they are most successfully persuaded to stop. The key aim of this discussion is to understand why, despite the obvious risk to their health, people choose to continue the habit. I will argue that it is cultural and social factors above all else that are to blame for smokers keeping up their deadly habit. Like many other habits, smoking and peopleʼs views towards it have been created by generations of changing attitudes, social norms and unwritten rules within society. These can and have been influenced by factors such as medical knowledge, fashion and politics. When looking for the answer to why people smoke it is therefore important to consider a historical perspective as a starting point for understanding the place of smoking in contemporary culture. In the UK tobacco smoking became most popular during the 20th century, with smoking being less widespread in 1900 and then peaking in the 1950ʼs. Midway through the century scientists began to make connections between smoking and health issues. Towards the end of the century peopleʼs awareness of the health risks meant that smoking had drastically reduced and cigarette advertising had almost completely disappeared. How accepted smoking was in society early on in the century depended on who you were. It was generally frowned upon for a woman to smoke in public up until 1929 when Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud, used his uncleʼs theories to market cigarettes to women. Bernays, who is considered by many