This week we went to the Museé du Fumer (smoking museum) to learn about the history of smoking in France and around the world. To the outside observer, the museum looked like an average smoke shop (it was), but hidden in the back were collections of antique pipes, oils, pictures and advertisements that told a unique story about smoking‘s cultural role through history. Smoking has been a social ritual since the very first civilizations; a “cultural icon” according to one poster in the museum. With a wall entirely dedicated to “smoking and the female image”, it’s hard to deny the impact cigarette smoking has had on our cultural perceptions. Indeed, smoking has been romanticized by many of our greatest cultural heroes (see picture below of celebrity-smoking-pictures-covered bathroom walls). One reason people think that the French continue to have a laisse-faire attitude toward smoking, despite the known health effects, is that they associate it with a sort of broken-artist image (Reed, 2016). France’s biggest heroes-Serge Gainsbourg, Brigitte Bardit, Django Reinhardt, Albert Camus-are all rather sullen, or broken in some artistic way, and all of them heavily smoke (Reed, 2016). Another theory behind the French’s attitude toward smoking is their rejection of broader society’s promotion of self-betterment (Reed, 2016). The French don’t like to be told what to do and besides, such an attitude is not conducive to art (Reed, 2016).
In addition to larger societal cues, smoking is known to be habitually enforced with environmental cues (Loughlin et al., 2017). But what about nicotine makes it so addictive when combined with those cues? The neuroscience: Nicotine increases brain energy metabolism. Specifically, it stimulates cerebral metabolism of glucose by about 50%. It has also been suggested that there is a coupled stimulation of oxygen perfusion, resulting in an overall increase in blood flow in the brain. These chemical changes facilitate a sense of calm and contentment for the smoker. When people regularly smoke, the receptors responsible for facilitating this metabolism desensitize to the drug, meaning that more of the drug is needed to feel the effects of increased cerebral metabolism. When the need to smoke more to maintain cerebral oxygen levels is coupled with the social pressure to smoke with the people around you, addiction can be easy.
Heading back to the U.S., I know I’ll smell less cigarette smoke. The American public health campaign against cigarettes was genius-it made cigarettes the subject of social condemnation. If France ever wants to shrink their smoking population, they might consider employing similar methods. However, considering smoking’s social associations, I don’t think it will happen in the very near future.
References
Loughlin, A., Funk, D., Coen, K., & Lê, A. D. (2017). Habitual nicotine-seeking in rats following limited training. Psychopharmacology, 234(17), 2619-2629.
Reed, J. (2016). In France, smoking still has that certain je ne sais quoi. The Gaurdian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jul/22/in-france-smoking-still-has-that-certain-je-ne-sais-quoi
Vafaee, M. S., Gjedde, A., Imamirad, N., Vang, K., Chakravarty, M. M., Lerch, J. P., & Cumming, P. (2015). Smoking normalizes cerebral blood flow and oxygen consumption after 12-hour abstention. Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism, 35(4), 699-705.
Whoa, color me impressed!