Smoking is not very popular now, since medics and scientists proved how dangerous inhaling tobacco smoke is to our health. In order to explain benefits of healthy lifestyle to people, scientists decided to learn more about people, who use to smoke. Russian researchers from Bashkirya State Medical University have performed a poll among policemen, people, whose work was a complete stress. The poll revealed how often policemen did smoke and whether they really wanted to quit. Promoting healthy lifestyle among policemen turned out to be an uneasy task.
Russian researchers have questioned 1238 policemen and found out that nearly every second person smoked 12-16 cigarettes per day in average. Smokers are mainly employed in criminal investigation department - 61.5% employers smoke, in paramilitary security services - 57.2% of smokers, in regional operative authorized officers - 56.1% of smokers, and in patrol and inspection service 55.4% employers smoke.
Policemen, who do not smoke that much, work in administrative services (35.2% of smoking employees), road patrol services (traffic police, 39%) and special designation police detachments with 40% of smokers employed. About two thirds of young policemen and about 90% of policemen aged over 40 years, say they want to quit smoking, but they do not really do anything to quit. Various reasons prevent them from quitting smoking - some say smoking helps them handle with stress or concentrate of some tasks, others lack will power to quits, some do not know how to quit, or they do not have time or money to see the doctor, or they do known know that address of a doctor. One smoker out of five confesses that smoking is the only thing that helps to get along with their colleagues.
Desire to quit smoking is tightly connected with anxiety level. Over 97% of policemen, who tend to emotionally react on any kind of situation, will be happy to be done with their addiction. However, those, who seem to remain calm and unaffected, but show intense reaction on some specific situations, are not so willing to quit smoking. Fighters with tobacco addiction will be happy to know reasons why policemen still quit smoking, despite all abovementioned aspects of life. About 40% of smoking policemen worry about their own health and about health of family members. One out of ten smokers complains about high tobacco prices. Only 7.3% care about administrative regulations, prohibiting smoking.
About 300 policemen have visited one-year long special educational courses on healthy lifestyle. However, listening to the course didn't lead to switching to healthy lifestyle in those people - no one stopped drinking alcoholic beverages or increased the level of physical activity. As for smoking, nothing has changed as well - number of cigarettes smoked per day remained nearly constant. However, healthy lifestyle promotion led to increased amount of quitting smoking attempts among policemen, who visited the course - a good sign for medics and scientists.
Source: Science & Technologies
Anna Kizilova
Author: Anna Kizilova