"Irrespective of the ethics involved," one company memo said in 1985, cigarettes should be designed to enable smokers to take more smoke than smoking machines measure, preferably unwittingly.
7 12 Smoking satiates a physiological need by delivering nicotine while tobacco packaging, which features carefully designed brand livery, enables smokers to construct, maintain and project desired social identities.
The ecigarette may also enable smokers to continue to 'smoke' in smoke-free environments, thus delaying or preventing cessation in people who might otherwise quit.
In order to avoid this, some ecigarettes are now marketed for enjoyment, or as devices that enable smokers to "smoke" everywhere, including smoke-free places [ 3, 4].
Increasing the prices of more expensive cigarettes on top of tobacco tax increases should benefit public health, but the growing price gap enables smokers to downtrade to cheaper tobacco products and may explain smoking-related inequalities.
Because rationalising smoking's risks enables smokers to distance themselves from dissonance-inducing health consequences, self-exemption reduces motivation to quit and has prompted calls for work examining how self-exempting rationalisations could be challenged.
(Wiltshire et al., 2005, p. 608) Individuals were found to be purposefully shifting between their smoker identities and the possibility of rapidly transitioning between these identities enabled smokers to act in different ways in different contexts (e.g., in front of friends vs. employers).
Comparing themselves favorably with others in their immediate social environment thus enabled smokers to retain a relatively positive identity despite the perceived negative connotations of smoking (Brown et al., 2011; Hoek, Maubach et al., 2013; Johnson et al., 2003; Lawson, 1994; Scheffels, 2009).
Recent government policies on tobacco control and health inequalities in the UK recognise the importance of encouraging and enabling all smokers to quit and of intensifying efforts to reduce smoking rates in disadvantaged areas and groups.
We are already seeing success in our efforts to enable adult smokers to transition away from cigarettes and believe our products have the potential over the long-term to contribute meaningfully to public health in the U.S. and around the world.
