by Michael Reeve, The Conversation

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

In the UK and much of the west, smoking rates have consistently declined since the turn of the millennium. But during some of the most anxiety-ridden months of the COVID pandemic in early 2020, that rate of decline slowed almost to a stop.

What's more, despite a rise in the rate of people trying to quit, there was a curious increase in the number of young people (aged 18 to 24) smoking for the first time.

A recent study suggests that the social disruption, boredom, and stress brought about by the pandemic may have contributed to a rise in young people taking up smoking.

As a historian of wartime endurance and resilience in modern Britain, I've been studying tobacco use from the 1850s to the 1950s. I try to understand why smoking was so central to everyday life during particularly stressful times, like the armed conflicts of the period. Indeed, there has long been a link between smoking and stress relief.

Smoking as stress relief

Many Victorian and Edwardian writers, including notable doctors and surgeons, showed a keen interest in tobacco. For some, it was the drug of modernity, as its soothing effects (caused by nicotine) were the ideal antidote to the stress and tension that came with the machine age.

The invention of new technology, such as the telegraph and railways, made life more fast-paced and stressful. As early as the late 1850s, some doctors claimed that people could fall prey to overexcited "nerves" (a common shorthand for the effects of stress that we still use today) if they did not find a calming intoxicant.

From the 1880s, cigarettes were mass-produced, reaching more consumers than ever before. Many working-class men switched from the pipe to the cigarette, which was seen as a more practical accompaniment to modern life. It was also cheap: a pack could be picked up and smoked without any prior preparation for no more than a few pence.

At the turn of the 20th century, even the medical journal The Lancet suggested that smoking could ease the "restlessness and irritability" that accompanied urban life. Such an endorsement helped tobacco manufacturers and retailers sell their wares.

But crisis and war have always provided the biggest boost to tobacco use. The onset of the First World War in 1914 ensured the supremacy of the cigarette in Britain. By Christmas 1914, more than 96% of British soldiers were smokers, and both the government and civilians at home sent, literally, tons of tobacco to the front.

Cigarettes didn't just ease the boredom of life in the trenches; they were seen to improve the mental and physical well-being of servicemen. As The Lancet put it in October 1914:

"To the soldier and the sailor in the present war, with his nervous system in a ceaseless state of tension from the dangers and excitement, tobacco must be a real solace and joy when he can find time for this well-earned indulgence."

Nurses even administered cigarettes to injured men in hospitals. In earlier conflicts, including the Boer war (1899-1902) and the Crimean war (1853-56), many military and medical writers had said much the same thing. But the machine-made cigarette made smoking more accessible.

Journal information: The Lancet 

Provided by The Conversation 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.