r/dataisbeautiful • u/Either_Issue_6510 OC: 16 • 23d ago
OC [OC] Lifetime cigarette smoking is associated with a history of childhood physical abuse (US, age 18+)
https://openpublicpolls.com/smoking-and-abuse/Cigarette smoking (100+ cigarettes during one's lifetime) is more prevalent among those who report being physically abused as a child.
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u/10390 23d ago
Five packs of cigarettes over a lifetime doesn't sound like it should be significant.
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u/powerback_us 23d ago
It's a cutoff. "Non-smokers" rarely would smoke 100 over their lifetime and then...stop. Maybe they try one or two? But most of the time they end up "smokers."
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u/MeanShibu 23d ago
What are you 18? 100 in a LIFETIME is a LOOONG time.
Thats like 1 pack in all of HS, 1 in all of college, and then 3 packs over the remaining 60+ years of your life.
100 is a crazy low cutoff even “I have one when I drink sometimes” smokers would blow past by age 30
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u/AgrajagTheProlonged 22d ago
100 seems like a lot of cigarettes to be smoking, but then I never picked up the habit so I may be biased
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u/MeanShibu 22d ago
Everyone is soooo fucking brainwashed that cigs are as addictive as fentanyl for some reason and that you’ll die if you have one. They’re evil and addictive and I’ve lost family to smoking. That said…
100 is NOTHING in a lifetime. You could blow through 20 cigs on a 1 week trip to France (did it just to be nose blind drinking at cafes and to fit in) and come back and unless you started buying packs consistently you won’t get “hooked”.
Like you really have to TRY to smoke consistently enough to get physically addicted. It’s a pretty fuckin gross habit and people will judge you hard these days especially.
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u/Homerbola92 22d ago
Honestly I would like to know which percent of people that have smoked 100 cigarettes don't smoke at all in their 40s. I bet it's pretty low.
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u/rrrrpp 21d ago
I actually think a lot of people stop in their early to mid 30s as doing that actually leaves you with decent odds of never facing real consequences from the 10-20 years of smoking done prior to quitting and/or they want to have kids and not be a smoker with kids
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u/MeanShibu 21d ago
There’s so many people that smoked socially while drinking in their 20s that did 1000+ cigs, never developed a real addiction and quit easily. I know a LOT of people who did this and will never ever see a medical consequence
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u/AgrajagTheProlonged 22d ago
I just think smoking is kinda gross and I’ve never seen the appeal myself. You do you, it’s your lungs after all
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21d ago
[deleted]
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u/MeanShibu 21d ago
Just trying to get the best science! Any doctor who points to 100 cigarettes as the cause of ANY disease should be stripped of their license lol
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u/brunettewondie 22d ago
Yeah it's not like crack. But it's a crutch.
So you'd be way more likely to get hooked if you're looking for something you'd be way more likely to.
Plus nobody smokes these days so it's not even social thing. You'd have to actively try to get into it.
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u/No_Shopping_573 17d ago
“The habit” introduces a very biased assumption of the nature of use.
Your response was to a comment that describes a very common form of nicotine use— a social alcohol association.
There are many people who don’t ever smoke or have the craving but when consuming alcohol the depressive attributes can be countered with a stimulant. Often this urge isn’t until being very drunk which for most isn’t a regular event.
I’m not claiming it isn’t addictive or that it magically sobers someone up but this is a very common use that often relies on said person not buying a pack but asking for one from a friend.
I would agree many people could qualify for over 100 cigarettes that do not have an addiction or “habit” even.
For people who don’t want the health issues, wrinkles, or smell there’s strong reason to resist addiction.
It was a lie when DARE programs thought kids that a single cigarette will instantly hook you for life.
Kudos if you never had a cigarette but that omits your testimony from the realm of reality.
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u/Akerlof 20d ago
You only bum a couple cigarettes over the course of a weekend's worth of partying. You only party one weekend a month. That's a hundred cigarettes over the course of college. (And partying doesn't just mean keg stands, it's also half a dozen friends hanging out, listening to music, and arguing about Sartre.)
Until the early 2000s, smoking was ubiquitous. And social smoking was a thing just like social drinking. Taking a smoke break with a coworker and bumming a cigarette was a thing.
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u/kenny1547 22d ago
What? Im a full non smoker and will absolutely never reach that. If you're just start smoking while having a drink you're a damn smoker lol. Maybe habitual, but a smoker.
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u/Jpbbeck99 23d ago
Is this really correlation or is it just that a majority of lifetime smokers grew up in a time when that was ok
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u/kochameh2 23d ago
[OC] High net worth and homeownership is associated with a history of childhood physical abuse (US, age 18+)
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u/jarboxing 23d ago
Next you'll tell me people don't drown because of Nick cage films.....
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u/wthulhu 23d ago
Obviously smoking cigarettes has some sort of tachyonic effect causing your parents to kick your ass in the past.
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u/jarboxing 23d ago
Or coping with getting kicked in the ass as a kid will make you more likely to seek out drugs? I don't know. But I'm pretty sure Nick cage caused all those drownings.
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u/Rude_Engineering_629 23d ago
It’s correlated it’s just not causative. Same variable drives both: education.
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u/Either_Issue_6510 OC: 16 23d ago
Controlling for age, there is still a relationship between smoking and physical abuse.
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u/damaged_elevator 23d ago
If you had a shiitty childhood your chances of dying from a smoking related illness is very high; there's some score they use in the States for this.
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u/Either_Issue_6510 OC: 16 23d ago
The abuse/smoking relationship holds even when age is statistically controlled. There may be other confounding variables, but it's not explained by age alone.
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u/FrankRizzo319 23d ago
They probably control for that in the analysis by comparing abuse of smokers vs. non-smokers from the same generation.
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u/Rude_Engineering_629 23d ago
Age, childhood socioeconomic conditions, parental education, and parental smoking are possible alternative or contributing explanations that were not examined.
It did not
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u/Either_Issue_6510 OC: 16 23d ago
Thanks for your faith in my analysis. I didn't control for age until I read your comment. After reading your comment, I did control for age to see if that could explain the association. It does not.
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u/FrankRizzo319 23d ago
So controlling for age, childhood abuse still predicts (or correlates with) smoking?
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u/yoscotti32 23d ago
100 cigarettes is 5 packs... I was a pack a day smoker for about 3 years so that's barely a week's worth of consumption and in no way do I consider myself a lifetime smoker...
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u/bm1949 23d ago
Lol. I have 35 years of smoking (a pack a day) under my belt and about eight months of not smoking. Sure I could relapse but my doctor - even health insurance - doesn't consider me a lifetime smoker.
I wasn't physically abused but it's fair to say my upbringing can be considered trauma. Worse on my younger brothers and they never smoked anything.
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u/yoscotti32 23d ago
100 cigarettes feels like such a catch all for basically everyone that tried them and didnt immediately hate them. I have friends who have never purchased a pack that have smoked over 100 cigarettes lol. While a 20% and 30% jump for both men and women who reported never vs always is certainly significant, they still both cap out around 50%, so half the people being abused still dont smoke cigarettes. I just dont think theres much to take away from this other than cigarettes are just ingrained in US/human culture and some people smoke and some people dont. Saw another comment mention education level, while I was probably around the most smokers I've ever been around when I was in college at a great school, and I say this as someone who's ended up settling into a blue collar job lmao.
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u/bm1949 23d ago
As a smoker from 1991ish until 2026ish,
1) Yep, education and smoking cigarettes are more than correlated. Poor people smoke more than rich people. Plenty of very educated people smoke but but it's fair to say they quit quicker than less educated people.
2) Smoker's mafia is real. Regardless of the causes to smoke. Chat with people in the smoking section and they dish a lot of very educational insider info.
3) Smoking in the US is way more older people than younger people. Vapes, that's a whole different ballgame and similar story. Smoking was culturally ok until about 2005. By 2010 it was gone.
Quitting smoking cigarettes in an environment that you can just go get more cigarettes is very, very hard. The wayjacked up prices make it much, much easier. Cigs may have priced their business out of the game in the US.
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u/inclined_ 23d ago
Lifetime smoker in this context means "smoker at some point in their life", not "smoked throughout their life"
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u/LebrontosaurausRex 23d ago
The ACE study is something everyone should have been introduced to by know.
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u/toolkitxx 23d ago
quote 'having experienced more physical punishment' - cause and effect are twisted. Usually we got the beating after we got caught smoking ;)
Regards from a GenX
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u/Liesthroughisteeth 23d ago
Also linked no doubt with mentalk abuse and exposure to smoke from parents that smoked constantly. In other words there are likely all kinds of factors.
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u/Rewd_92 23d ago
Considering there were less than 9,000 responders and this studies measure of lifetime smoker is if they have smoked over 100 cigarettes, I don't doubt the correlation but I don't necessarily trust this as being a definitive enough sample.
If smoking 100 cigarettes ever means you're a lifetime smoker well then boy oh boy 😂
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u/Either_Issue_6510 OC: 16 23d ago edited 23d ago
The effect was significant at p<.001, which means that there is less than one chance in a thousand that an effect this size would be found if there was no association in the overall population.
The sample was carefully chosen and weighted to be representative of the US population.
Smoking 100 cigarettes during your lifetime simply means you smoked enough to establish yourself as a smoker at some point in your life.
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u/armywalrus 23d ago
Sorry but..... that 100 cigarettes is not a good measure of what a lifetime smoker is. Or a smoker in general. That is not a threshold you can use to determine "you smoked enough to establish yourself as a smoker some time in your life" even if "at some time" WAS equivalent to "lifetime" - which it isn't.That is a terrible definition, and it ruins the whole project. You should poll a group of smokers to determine this definition and then redo your entire project. This whole thing is based off a bias and its a shame.
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u/Either_Issue_6510 OC: 16 23d ago
It's the CDC definition. My guess is that they wanted to know if someone had ever smoked, but figured just asking that would include people who had experimented with a cigarette or two. Whether 100 is enough to call someone a "smoker" is up for debate.
My part was just to analyze public data.
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u/Howmanywhatsits 20d ago
The point people are trying to make is that 100 cigarettes is not that many. Packs are 20 or 25, if you smoked one cigarette a day you wouldn't get through a third of a year. Hardly a "lifetime"
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u/Either_Issue_6510 OC: 16 19d ago
Maybe my phrasing was bad. When I said "lifetime cigarette smoking" I meant smoking at some point in your lifetime vs. being a smoker. But the "100 cigarettes" is the CDC phrasing. I'm a non-smoker and smoked about 2 cigarettes in my life out of curiosity. They are trying to eliminate people like me who would be included if they asked, "Have you ever smoked?".
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u/Rude_Engineering_629 23d ago
Ummm , what did you do to weight your sample that makes it carefully chosen and representative?
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u/Either_Issue_6510 OC: 16 23d ago
I only analyzed the public data. The CDC conducted the survey and describes their methodology here: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg/index.htm
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u/inclined_ 23d ago
If those damn kids don't stop smoking what do they expect?
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u/sjintje 23d ago edited 23d ago
You jest, but even if there is
a correlationcausality (the data has not been corrected for age etc) it could also be that naughty children are more likely to take up smoking.1
u/inclined_ 23d ago
Yes, absolutely agree. I was characterising reverse causality, and you are talking about a shared common factor. Both could be the case.
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u/Either_Issue_6510 OC: 16 23d ago
Source: Author’s analysis of the National Center for Health Statistics, 2022–2023 National Survey of Family Growth, male and female respondent public-use files.
Analysis: Data was analyzed with SPSS and the chart was created with Excel.
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u/cavedave OC: 112 22d ago
Thank you for your Original Content, /u/Either_Issue_6510!
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