Mentally Ill Make Up Nearly Half Of U.S. Tobacco Market

For all of my fellow smokers out there, I thought you might find this amusing. I know I did.

Harvard medical researchers have concluded that Americans with mental illness are nearly twice as likely to smoke cigarettes as people with no mental illness. The study, appearing in today�s Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) (jama.ama-assn.org...), finds 41 percent of people with mental illness are smokers compared to 22.5 percent of people who have never been mentally ill. The article also states that the mentally ill smoke more heavily than others.

Extrapolating their results to the U.S. population, the researchers estimate that people with diagnosable mental illness comprise nearly 45 percent of the total tobacco market in the U.S.

Said Harvard study author Lasser: �Perhaps mental illness causes smoking by making people more vulnerable to tobacco advertising or nicotine addiction; however, other studies have called the direction of causality into question, suggesting that smoking may cause mental illness and, our findings are certainly compatible with that as well.�
www.sciencedaily.com...

You hafta be crazy to want to smoke those things, they don't even get you "high", instead your body became use to them because you most likely started smoking to seem "cool" and now your body craves it....


They should atleast put a small amount of opium in them...



in the lysergical world

since when is being mentaly ill a bad thing?

Ive learned to distrust the establishment of "mentaly ill", seeing how most mentaly ill ive known (myself included, ive been tagged as that) are mostly disgruntled, disennfrancheised, and closer to the truth than the so called "sane people"

This is Hysterical,

I am certified chronically mentally ill according to Uncle Sam and he pay's me to stay home and leave you all alone
Not only that but not 50% but 1000% of the individuals on this board are insane

Tut Tut

p.s. i went to Harvard

Oh and don't forget this one

news.yahoo.com.../nm/20040418/hl_nm/health_smokers_dc_1

Smoking is an all around killer. Seems like smoking is linked to everything

this is why i smoke european cigarettes. much less cancer causing additives

Jeez? So my crazy next door neighbor and I are the only two certifiable cases on the block, huh?

I think Harvard's research sucks in this case. Hey, we both got cats, too. Does that make us animal hoarders too?

Not! And I'll smoke if I want to smoke.

Home rolled cigs are the best way. Easily the most cost efficient and they deliver that nicotine like none other

If cigs make someone feel better thats not my business, they better know not to depend on someone else for the medical expenses.

[Edited on 26-4-2004 by jrod]

I recall reading a study that the mentally ill are more prone to dopamine reactions induced from the nicotine.

They smoke more, and more frequently, becouse they are more likely to not be able to control the nicotine 'need'.

I suspected this. thinking about the people I know that are mentally ill (myself included), all but one smoke cigarettes. in my personal experience, smoking is calming, and who is more in need of that than the 'mentally ill'?

Originally posted by Skadi_the_Evil_Elf
since when is being mentaly ill a bad thing?

I'm with the evil elf on this one.

Don't hate me because I'm crazy...buy Marlboro!

Being chronically mentaly ill, I am happy to know I am in good company. Thank you all for your words of wisdom and encouragement The lamp is lit smoke em' if you got em'

Thee Tut

Home rolled cigs are the best way. Easily the most cost efficient and they deliver that nicotine like none other

Amen to that... I can get a hundred smokes out of a pack of Drum and two of papers for like five bucks total... compare that to, say, $8 for a hundred Dorals or $10 for Marlboros, and it's no contest.

That said, I too am certified mentally ill (SAD, OCD, MDD, etc... they got me coming and going ) and a died-in-the-wool nicotine addict.

Interesting