A new study say Americans who had quit smoking picked up the habit again due to stress related to the disastrous 9/11 tragedy.
The 9/11 tragedy not only caused damage in terms of life and property but the socio-economic and political after-effects of the disaster are reverberating till now
A Weill Cornell Medical College public health study says that over one million Americans who had quit smoking took up the habit again owing to stress they experienced due to the attacks of 9/11.
"This helps us better understand what the real costs of such disasters are in human and economic tolls, and it suggests ways that such future stressful reactions that result in excess smoking might be avoided," says the study's author, Dr. Michael F. Pesko, an instructor in Weill Cornell Medical College's Department of Public Health in a press statement.
Pesko reported that while other tragic incidences like the Oklahoma City bombing didn't affect smoking rates in the U.S., the 9/11 caused a 2.3 percent rise in overall smoking rate in the country. Data from the study was collected from after the incident to 2003. Communities and facilities that had more numbers of active-duty and reserve members of the military during the attack reported an extra increase in self-reported stress, which led to the increase in smoking.
"This study provides the first unbiased estimate of the effect of stress on smoking, and the finding that there was such a big increase in smoking nationwide, seemingly due to one event, is extraordinary, and surprising," says Dr. Pesko. "It sheds light on a hidden cost of terrorism."
Pesko says that there always has been a strong link between stress and substance use or abuse. To prove this point the researcher conducted an experiment wherein he chose two domestic terrorist attacks and examined data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, which tracks annual rates of risky personal behavior across the nation. He also used reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which were aggregated from monthly phone surveys conducted by health departments in every state regarding seat-belt use, smoking and drinking habits, the last time they visited a doctor or dentist, etc. He examined the self-reported days of stress and what he considers to be a bona fide stress response to whether former smokers begin smoking again.
He looked at 1,657,985 respondents and found that between 950,000 and 1.3 million adult former smokers resumed smoking, representing a 2.3 percent increase in adult smokers across the country. There was no such increase in the months and years following the Oklahoma City bombing.
He also revealed that the estimate cost to government because of 9/11-induced smoking was between $530 million to $830 million till 2003.
