Smoking as a Behavioural Disease and Its Causes

Abstract

The first section will discuss smoking as a behavioural disease. Smoking has become increasingly social-class differentiated, so that smoking increases the level of inequalities in health and consequently mortality. Lower social classes have a shorter life expectancy which is largely caused by differences in behaviour which leads to behavioural diseases, such as smoking, abuse of alcohol, inadequate diet and a lack of exercise. However, risky factors of lifestyle are often cumulative so that the effects of smoking and excessive use of alcohol may reinforce each other. The global pandemic of tobacco dependence is moving through four stages, whereby factors of health care have been given greater priority during a higher stage of economic development.