The Social Life of Smokes: Public Health Implications and Analysis

This essay delves into the multifaceted social life of smoking, meticulously examining the physical and social costs associated with it. The introduction highlights the detrimental effects of both mainstream and secondhand smoke (SHS), emphasizing the dangers of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). The essay references key studies and reports to illustrate smoking prevalence, particularly among specific demographics like Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations in Australia. It explores the complex system of cigarette exchange, especially among youths, and the influence of commercial tobacco availability. The essay also discusses the impact of smoking on social, moral, and psychogenic development, as well as the role of social availability in influencing smoking behaviors. Furthermore, the essay touches upon drug prohibition, referencing academic sources. The conclusion synthesizes the key analytical paradigms involved in the market behavior and its sociocultural response to provide a holistic understanding of the social life of smokes.

RUNNING HEAD: SOCIAL LIFE OF SMOKES
SOCIAL LIFE OF SMOKES
Name of Student
Name of University
Author note

1SOCIAL LIFE OF SMOKES
INTRODUCTION
The physical and social costs of smoking are too much (Goodchild, Nargis and
d'Espaignet 2018). The cigarette costs are not just a financial burden but it affect an
individual’s health and health of passerby’s around them. Health of the entire society is
affected too. Secondhand smoke (Patra et al. 2015) or SHS affects each person around us and
it can be devastating to our loved ones, our co-workers and to the community as well. There
is common misconception of secondhand smoke being less harmful than the mainstream
smoking but in reality; both mainstream and second hand smoking is equally hazardous. The
type of smoke called ETS or environmental tobacco smoke (Akinkugbe et al. 2017) is
actually a mixture of the active and passive smoking. Mainstream smoke is a form of smoke
that is inhaled directly through the nostrils of smoker holding the cigarette. On the other
hand, side-stream smoking refers to the smoke that escapes from a lit cigarette and fuses with
the environment. This types of smoking contain an elevated concentration of carcinogens or
cancer causing agents as compared to the mainstream (World Health Organization, 2016).
These particles of carcinogens are comparatively smaller in size than the particles of
mainstream smoke and hence, they enter the lungs easily compared to the other. Second hand
smoking is related to lung cancer, and laryngeal cancer, pharyngeal cancer, brain, childhood
leukemia, rectum, urinary bladder and tract cancers. Second hand smoking can lead to
malignant illnesses and fatal consequences as well.
Case 1: Dwyer, R. 2011. ‘Chapter 1: The social life of smokes: Processes of exchange in
a heroin marketplace’ in Fraser and Moore (eds), 2011. The Drug Effect: Health,
Crime and Society. Melbourne: Cambridge U Press.
In 2016, in Australia about 14 percent people above the age of 18 years were reported
to have over smoked. Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal people in the year of 2014–15 –
comprised of 42 per cent people who smoked just above the age of 15 years and their
numbers were double than the other population. Selected statistics of 201 National Drug
Strategy Household Survey showed that the male’s smoking percentage was16 per cent and
female’s smoking percentage was about 12 per cent, alone in the year of 2016. Male smoking
percentage was much higher than the females of the same community. People aged over 70
were found to be smoking as well and the rate was 6 percent. The members of community
who has quit smoking has outnumbered people who actually currently smoke. A report in
2016 revealed that over twenty percentage of the Australian population have finally quit
smoking while being alive, which is quite an achievement. From 2001 to 2016, 61 about 61
percent of the population has taken the route of quitting cigarettes.
As mentioned in the above study, drug markets are influenced by the behavior of
general public whose day to day behaviors constitutes the social relations (Takakura 2015)
concerns power differentials and underline cultural understandings. If one links the rate of
cigarette exchanges between the clients and the informants - heroin exchanges (Benefiel
2018) happening between the drug with marketplace leads to a generalized processing of
social situation and more exchanges.
Cigarette exchanges (Mistry et al. 2019) are a big concern amongst youths. This
elevation in the use of non-commercial tobacco are actually liked to a greater restriction on
the availability of commercial tobacco to youth. Adolescent focus groups were studied that
revealed that the youth under the restrictive policies can develop a very complex system of

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exchanging and obtaining cigarettes that involve their friends and other strangers with a
commercial tobacco access (Tanski et al. 2018) The study performs a randomized control
(community) trial that reveals that the teen smokers within the town premises have some
ordinances related to commercial access which were enforced, adopted to obtain their recent
cigarettes social source than the smokers located in the study’s control town who attempted
lesser to buy commercial cigarettes. An another evaluation that showed the local efforts
acting in promotion to ensure merchant compliance in accordance with the laid state
guidelines and laws restricting the commercial tobacco access by teen smokers, young adults
and it has also shown that the experimental group young adults and teen are more likely to
buy the commercial cigarettes through the help of adults while the people of control group
made no such attempts.
Commercial availability (Hiscock, 2018) actually refers to the opportunities in
obtaining of a tobacco from the market. Tobacco and smoking alters and disrupts social,
moral and psychogenic growth of individuals (Huxley 1972). The social availability is a state
that comprises of both the provision and the acquisition, and it can be linked to the other
important aspects of the adolescent’s world. The role models with normative expectations,
social opportunities and social support are the enhancers to commercial tobacco burn but
there are certain legal, natural barriers in youth people’s environment as well. A predictive of
this adolescent problematic behaviors can be very well related to tobacco and other substance
abuse. The social availability and opportunity to obtain a tobacco by the youth – consists of
non-commercial tobacco sources (El Dib et al. 2017) providing tobacco (like parents, friends,
other adults and other older adolescents), the opportunities to use tobacco in private and
public settings lead to community based anti-social and anti- humanistic behavior. Private
and public places which allows the young teens and the adults to smoke in front of seniors,
elders, peers, in homes, at worksites and even recreation areas of educational settings are to
be regarded as hazardous form of social exchanges. The observation of these tobacco inclined
youth and their senior role models can be a decisive study in deciphering the underlying
psychological and social factors leading to opening up cigarette and other smoking
opportunities. In the other words, the social availability from another perspective can analyze
the adolescents’ social interaction with a given market environment that permit and promote
the tobacco use.
Commercial heroin exchange in certain market sites are a characteristic of Australian
heroin market scene since early 90s. Although there are some qualitative analyses and
investigations being undertaken - a dominant approach in analysis and eradication of these
Australian sites has been undertaken as a criminological quantitative way (Patterns of
Cannabis Use in Australia 1994). Trafficking laws and proper sentencing of convicts should
persist (Launey 2001). The efforts that largely study and uses a narrow market conception –
circumscribes the whole formed concept in drug intake behavior. This thesis is currently
positioned along with long tradition of the ethnographic drug user accounts that has active
agents within the framework of drug business, embedded in a very particular and typical
social, economic and sociocultural contexts. This thesis in particular has two important
questions: 1) what social processes and relations constitute the street specific drug selling and
consumption behavior? ; 2) how do these street-specific drug marketers express their agency
in spite of knowing the legal and sociocultural offences that they are aware of? An
ethnographic examination and analysis of daily lives of Vietnamese market based heroin user
and dealers who also participate in the local heroin business in the suburb of Footscray,
Melbourne.

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CONCLUSION
The key analytical paradigms involved in the gross, overall market behavior and its
sociocultural response will be studied. The marketers who express through agencies and
ethnographical studies of Footscray’s market is to be scrutinized to comprehend the complex,
social dynamics processes and marketplace relations related to drug selling behavior.
Exchange and drug agency will be the two themes through which the market will be studied.

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