Rokers die, zoals tegenwoordig de gewoonte van beleidsmakers is, in een verdomhoekje worden gewerkt hebben veel meer moeilijkheden met stoppen dan rokers die niet onder druk staan. Dat is de uitkomst van een Canadees onderzoek dat recent werd gepubliceerd.

Overheden en anti-tabakslobby moeten nog eens goed nadenken over hun strijd tegen het roken zeggen de onderzoekers. Rokers die zo onder druk worden gezet worden onzeker over hun kansen om te kunnen stoppen en zullen ook minder gauw bij een doktersbezoek toegeven dat ze roken, waardoor ze onbereikbaarder worden voor artsen.

De reactie van de anti-rokenorganisaties op dit onderzoek is voorspelbaar: de onderzoekers spelen onder één hoedje met de tabaksindustrie.

Years of anti-smoking laws and campaigns have amounted to a public shaming of smokers that could make it harder for them to quit, a group of UBC researchers argue in a new report.

There is an "urgent" need for governments to revisit their anti-smoking policies, the academics say, suggesting that the stigma around smoking could lead to patients hiding their tobacco use from doctors, and feeling desperate about ever kicking the habit. The policies run counter to how other addictions are treated by the public-health field, they argue.

"People are made to feel really, really bad about their smoking and are treated quite badly, but feel quite helpless in quitting," said Kirsten Bell, a medical anthropologist at the university and lead author of a paper just published on the issue.

"They feel really negatively about themselves, but quitting seems like an impossibility. ... They're not really given much support."

Her views raise questions about decades of conventional wisdom on how to combat the threat of tobacco use, blamed for 45,000 preventable deaths in Canada yearly. Anti-smoking advocates reacted vigorously to the article in the journal Social Science and Medicine, saying policy makers have strived not to victimize smokers themselves, while the falling rate of tobacco use is clear evidence the programs have succeeded.

The researchers' "shoddy" work just parrots the tobacco industry's attempt to portray anti-smoking efforts as an attack on individuals, said Garfield Mahood of the Non-Smokers Rights Association.

"What they've done with this paper is mischievous and careless and ill-informed," he said. "These people ... have simply bought into the tobacco industry's mischief."

The paper and further research yet to be published by Ms. Bell and colleagues was supported by a grant from the ethics branch of the Canadian Institute for Health Research.

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