Today, more than a billion of people continuously inhale and exhale toxic smoke through their cigarette butts. However, each smoker may have different mindset that we need to be aware of:
- Ignorants: They don’t care whether smoking is bad for them or not. They may have some knowledge of the hazardous effects of smoking, but they ignore these facts and they don’t want to know more about the details. With the proliferation of information, their number may shrink in recent years, but it doesn’t mean that they stop smoking. They simply become smokers with different kinds of mindsets. The change of mindset could actually strengthen their persistence to continue smoking.
- Deniers: Deniers are well informed about the great harm of smoking, but they don’t believe it. They know that smoking is bad for their health, but they often use excuses to validate their bad habits. They may argue that the city is already polluted enough so that it doesn’t make a difference if they have a few puffs of tobacco here and there. They also say that life itself is already harmful enough and smoking is insignificant in comparison compared to other risks.
- Defenders: They have a strong conviction that they need to continue smoking. They believe that smoking will help them to think and feel better. This group tends to despise any restriction of smoking in the public place, thinking that it’s their right. They may also insist that they aren’t addicted to smoking and they are able to stop this habit anytime they want. They fervently believe in the free of choice, including the freedom of smoking, while ignoring that it’s also the basic right for anyone to not get exposed to second-hand smoke.
- Admirers: These people adore the act of smoking and consider it as a part of human culture. They may even collect things related to the smoking activities, such as ornate ashtrays or cigarette packs from different countries. They love to roll their own cigarette and consider themselves as an expert to anything related to the smoking activity. Smoking is an activity that they truly love and they won’t trade it with anything else in the world.
- Conscious people: They know smoking is bad and they want to quit immediately. But, they can’t do it and they have failed again and again. They do admit their situation and try to stop the addiction. There actually many people who are in this category. They usually don’t stay in this group forever. Either they succeed in their attempt to quit smoking or they continue smoking due to lack of support or determination, due to the huge mental obstacle.
- Desperates: They know that smoking is a bad thing and they have tried so hard to stop this bad habit. They already lose faith about their ability to stop smoking. Each time they light up a cigarette, they feel bad about it, but it is just unstoppable. They have seen how tobacco smoke can do to a person’s body and they see this first hand by witnessing people around them.
