Is tobacco use a disease?

Abstract

Should tobacco use be framed as a disease or a population-based health concern? At present, there are 2 potentially competing approaches to reducing smoking rates. The first, the disease-centered approach, identifies smoking as an individual-level disorder requiring medical treatment. The second, the population approach, views smoking as a collective behavior, one shaped by social norms and attitudes and amenable to change through population-level interventions. The last 30 years have seen the tobacco control community focus on 2 complementary ways of reducing smoking rates: the disease-centered approach and the population approach. The failure to reduce smoking prevalence further in recent years, however, should not serve as a validation of the disease-centered approach to smoking and a corresponding intensification of the search for individual "causes" of smoking. Similarly, more benefit should not be expected from the use of population-based interventions alone. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)