Health Psychology : a Textbook

4 Government interventions. An additional means to promote both smoking

cessation and healthy drinking is to encourage governments to intervene. Such

interventions can take several forms:


 Restricting/banning advertising. According to social learning theory, we learn to

smoke and drink by associating smoking and drinking with attractive charac-

teristics, such as ‘It will help me relax’, ‘It makes me look sophisticated’, ‘It makes

me look sexy’, ‘It is risky’. Advertising aims to access and promote these beliefs

in order to encourage smoking and drinking. Implementing a ban/restriction on

advertising would remove this source of beliefs. In the UK, cigarette advertising

was banned in 2003.


 Increasing the cost. Research indicates a relationship between the cost of cigarettes

and alcohol and their consumption. Increasing the price of cigarettes and alcohol

could promote smoking and drinking cessation and deter the initiation of these

behaviours, particularly among children. According to models of health beliefs,

this would contribute to the perceived costs of the behaviours and the perceived

benefits of behaviour change.


 Banning smoking in public places. Smoking is already restricted to specific places

in many countries (e.g. in the UK most public transport is no smoking). A wider

ban on smoking may promote smoking cessation. According to social learning

theory, this would result in the cues to smoking (e.g. restaurants, bars) becoming

eventually disassociated from smoking. However, it is possible that this would

simply result in compensatory smoking in other places as illustrated by some of the

research on worksite no-smoking policies.


 Banning cigarette smoking and alcohol drinking. Governments could opt to ban

cigarettes and alcohol completely (although they would forego the large revenues

they currently receive from advertising and sales). Such a move might result in a

reduction in these behaviours. However, other drugs such as cannabis are illegal

in most countries, and this is still smoked by large percentages of the population. In

addition, prohibition in the USA was remarkably unsuccessful.

FOCUS ON RESEARCH 5.2: PUTTING THEORY INTO

PRACTICE – WORKSITE SMOKING BAN

A pilot study to examine the effects of a workplace smoking ban on smoking,

craving, stress and other behaviours (Gomel et al. 1993).

Over the past few years many organizations have set up workplace bans. These offer an

opportunity to examine the effects of policy of behaviour change and to assess the

effectiveness of public health interventions in promoting smoking cessation.

Background

Workplace bans provide an opportunity to use group motivation and group social

support to promote smoking cessation. In addition, they can access individuals who

122 HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY