September 11 increased smoking

September 11 increased smoking, The 9/11 attacks on America caused around one million former smokers to take up the habit again in the U.S., according to a new report.

The study is the first to look at the net costs to society of terrorism-induced smoking in the U.S. after 9/11 and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

'This helps us better understand what the real costs of such disasters are in human and economic tolls, and it suggests ways that future stressful reactions that result in excess smoking might be avoided,' said the study’s author, Dr Michael Pesko, of Weill Cornell Medical College’s Department of Public Health in New York.

While the Oklahoma City bombing didn’t affect smoking rates in the U.S., Pesko suggested that 9/11 caused a significant 2.3 percent increase nationwide.

The increase started after 9/11 and continued through to the end of 2003, when analysis of the data ended, he says.

Stress was also found to especially increase in communities with a higher concentration of active-duty and reserve members of the military, and among higher-educated groups.

The increase in stress following 9/11 was found to account for all of the increase in smoking.

'This study provides the first unbiased estimate of the effect of stress on smoking, and the finding that there was such a big increase in smoking nationwide, seemingly due to one event, is extraordinary, and surprising,' said Dr. Pesko. 'It sheds light on a hidden cost of terrorism.'

Dr. Pesko has long been interested in the relationship between stress and substance abuse.

'There is a consensus in the research community that stress is a very large motivator for individuals to use substances, but this has not really been studied very thoroughly,' he explained.

To shed light on the relationship, Pesko chose two domestic terrorist attacks and examined data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, which tracks annual rates of risky personal behaviour across the nation.