How long does it take to become addicted to tobacco?

Smoking is an addiction that is very widespread, and although it has been linked to problems respiratory, cardiac and even dermatological and dental, the truth is that quitting tobacco costs many people.

As in many things related to health, prevention is better than cure. The ideal is not to smoke at all, but on many occasions social pressure can and, confident, we smoke the odd cigarette.

How long does it take to become addicted to tobacco? This is the question that many of those confident ask themselves when they inhale the smoke of that cigarette or cigar that they have just offered us. We will answer this question below.

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How long does it take to become addicted to smoking?

It is almost common sense that tobacco is a drug and as such is addictive. The cigarette is a source of pleasure and also remorse for millions of people around the world. Every second thousands of people inhale cigarette smoke. A smoke that they know is harmful but, despite it,

They find it hard to get away from this vice and opt for a healthier lifestyle.

Although youth are increasingly aware of the risks of tobacco, it is not uncommon to find young people who have fallen into this addiction. They are warned that they will end up regretting it, especially when after years of smoking on a daily basis they notice that it costs them every breathe again, tire faster, have yellow teeth and notice that food no longer tastes as intensely as before.

Given how dangerous and addictive tobacco is, there has always been an interest in knowing exactly how long it takes to become addicted. It seems clear that smoking a cigarette very occasionally does not cause addiction, but it is also quite evident that not a few start by smoking a few cigarettes from time to time and after relatively little say that they are having a hard time quitting.

How long does tobacco addiction take to appear is a question that has been tried to answer with scientific data on many occasions. The objective of this is to make the youth aware of how unhealthy this habit is and how quickly one can fall into addiction. If you know exactly how long it takes to turn one-time tobacco use into a true addiction this data can be used to warn newer smokers how quickly they can become addicts.

Consolidating Smoking Through Smoking: What Does the Science Say?

Although in recent years an attempt has been made to investigate this question more thoroughly, it turns out to be quite revealing. study carried out in the year 2000 which allowed an answer to the question of how long it takes to fall into addiction to tobacco. The article in question is that of Joseph R. DiFranza and colleagues, who at the time of their research were working at the University of Massachusetts, and is entitled "Initial symptoms of nicotine dependence in adolescents."

This study, which judging by the years it has been published we could consider as classic, was done to test a widely shared belief regarding tobacco. Until then it was considered that in nicotine, a substance that causes addiction to tobacco and which is characterized by tolerance, craving to smoke and be responsible for the withdrawal symptoms, their dependence occurred very gradually, after a long period of habitual consumption of at least five cigarettes newspapers.

This same belief was based on the fact that some adults, whose levels of absorption and metabolism of nicotine do not differed from other daily smokers, did not develop such dependence despite smoking up to a maximum of five cigarettes newspapers. However, this belief did not seem to be entirely true, which is why DiFranza's group decided to carry out an investigation on the time of acquisition of addiction.

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Method

The research was carried out with a group of 681 adolescent students of seventh grade (first of ESO) aged between 12 and 13 years. The follow-up period was one year and the information on tobacco consumption was obtained through three confidential interviews with each of the participants during the period of application of the investigation.

Tobacco addiction can manifest itself in different types of dependency and, in fact, it could be debated whether not all cases of smoking are addiction to tobacco, in So much so that, as we have mentioned before, there are people who smoke but do not have problems so that they do not to smoke. The study explains that the latency period until the appearance of dependence symptoms was calculated taking into account the time when participants started smoking at least once a month.

Results and conclusions of the study

Through their research, DiFranza and colleagues found that 22% of the 95 subjects who had started smoking sporadic reported any symptoms of nicotine dependence four weeks after they started smoking once a month. One or more withdrawal symptoms were reported by 60 of those same individuals (63%), of whom 62% had reported the first symptom before starting daily smoking.

Based on their findings, the researchers concluded that the first symptoms of nicotine dependence may appear within a few days or weeks after occasional use has started. In fact, these same experts found that these manifestations even appeared before daily consumption, which suggests that addiction to tobacco is much faster than previously thought and there is always the risk that, even if it is consumed very punctually, it will develop smoking.

But despite this conclusion, the researchers could not ignore the fact that there are people who smoke daily but do not develop addiction. For this same reason, the DiFranza team raised the possibility that there were different types of smokers, speaking of three groups. On the one hand, there are smokers who become addicted quickly, just smoking a few cigarettes for a few weeks. Then there would be another group that they would gradually become addicted to. And finally we would find the group of smokers who would not fall into addiction, controlling the habit.

But these same researchers comment on one of the study's limitations, and that is the fact that they did it with adolescents. Adolescents may be more sensitive to nicotine than adults, which would imply that they are at greater risk for developing addiction to tobacco.

Added to this, in the case of adult smokers, the possible influence of the consumption of other drugs cannot be ignored either, being alcohol the one that is most accompanied by smoking.

What can be extracted from this pioneering work at the time is that it is necessary to warn the youth of the risk of tobacco, indicating how quickly you can fall into an addiction that is very difficult get free.

It is perfectly plausible to be smoking a few cigarettes for a few days and then having a really hard time stopping., since a dangerous habit has just been generated. It seems that most of the time this habit leads to an addiction that can last the rest of the life and therefore it is better to stay away from cigarettes and stop playing with fire.