Pubdate: Sun, 05 Oct 1997 Source: Houston Chronicle, page 12A Contact: Website: http://www.chron.com/ Addiction but one reason smokers can't quit By ELSA C. ARNETT KnightRidder Tribune News WASHINGTON It's not easy being a smoker these days: They are banished to building entrances, ostracized from planes and targeted by policymakers intent on ending the addiction. Still, many remain faithful to their cigarettes. For about 48 million Americans, one in four adults, the fragile stick of sheathed tobacco exerts a mighty grip. Seventy percent of smokers say they want to quit, but more than 90 percent of those who try, fail. Physical dependence is but one reason. "We have things to take care of the nicotine need, like the patch or nicotine gum," said clinical psychologist Barry Lubetkin, director of the Institute for Behavior Therapy in New York. "But those things are often not enough. That means there's something else at work something that's a lot harder to get at than the nicotine." Indeed, the cigarette's lure stems from its many psychological powers. For the employee bawled out by the boss, it gives reassurance. For the person searching for companionship at a bar, it offers a veneer of confidence and seduction. For the harried parent, it produces a few moments of escape. As he struggled to quit, French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, echoing the sentiments of many, wrote: "In truth, I did not so much care for the taste of tobacco that I was going to lose." Rather, it was "the meaning of the act of smoking. I used to smoke at performances, mornings at work, evenings after dinner, and it seemed to me that in ceasing to smoke, I was going to subtract some of the interest of the performance, some of the evening dinner's savor, some of the fresh vivacity of the morning's work." Cigarettes, it seems, give meaning to ordinary tasks and accentuate experiences. Unlike alcohol, which relaxes but can make a person groggy, or caffeine, which energizes but can give someone the jitters, tobacco has the chameleonlike ability to assuage bad feelings and intensify pleasurable ones. It calms and it invigorates. The appeal of smoking confounds nonsmokers who are repulsed by the noxious substance that stains teeth, stinks up clothes, poisons the air and destroys the body. But, as the prohibition against alcohol during the 1920s proved, the public assault on smoking may, in some ways, enhance its magnetism. "Cigarettes have almost always been associated with death no one ever thought it was good for you," said Richard Klein, a French professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., whose 1993 book, Cigarettes are Sublime, elevated smoking to an art. Referring to a British cigarette brand called Death Head, which features a skull and crossbones on the pack, Klein said the risk is part of the appeal. "Cigarettes taste bad, but it's a bad taste you quickly learn to love. It's dangerous; it's an adult pleasure. People are drawn to its dark beauty." Society is reluctantly accommodating defiant smokers who have no intention of quitting. Hermetically sealed smoking rooms are surfacing in airports and shopping malls, as are outdoor smoking shelters that resemble bus stop sheds. These structures may become more familiar. While adult smoking has declined steadily over the last 40 years, smoking among 10thgraders jumped 30 percent between 1991 and 1995, and it leaped 40 percent for ninthgraders during that period. The latest reports showed that 4.1 million youths ages 12 to 17 smoke, or 18 percent of that age group. To reduce those numbers, President Clinton wants to raise cigarette taxes and ban some outdoor smoking. The Environmental Protection Agency rates secondhand smoke a leading carcinogen. And attorneys general from around the country are trying to wring billions of dollars from "evil" tobacco companies. Even so, tobacco products are gaining popularity as a '90s leisure activity. Cigar bars have sprouted around the country, and some restaurants feature "cigar evenings." The Internet is rife with new Web sites offering chat lines for militant smokers, colorful pictures of cigarette brands from all over the world and even photographs of women dressed and undressed in various smoking poses. Charles Harris, president of Visual Solutions Inc., a Cary, N.C., company that produces 45minute videotapes of attractive evening gownclad women, lounging and smoking cigarettes, explained the popularity of his $35 videos. "Smoking shows a woman's hands and lips," he said. "It's sexy, and it's considered naughty." Such images of smoking abound. A recent study by the University of California, San Francisco, indicated that half the movies released between 1990 and 1995 included a major character who smoked, up from 29 percent during the 1970s. The American Lung Association of Sacramento, Calif., examined last year's major films and found that 77 percent showed tobacco use.