Home > Smoking dependence in 18 European countries: hard to maintain the hardening hypothesis.

Fernández, Esteve and Lugo, Alessandra and Clancy, Luke and Matsuo, Keitaro and La Vecchia, Carlo and Gallus, Silvano (2015) Smoking dependence in 18 European countries: hard to maintain the hardening hypothesis. Preventive Medicine, 81, pp. 314-319.

OBJECTIVE
When the prevalence of smoking decreases in a population there is a hypothesis -the so-called "hardening hypothesis"- that the remaining smokers form a subgroup of "hardcore smokers". Our aims were to test the hardening hypothesis, and to analyze the determinants of high dependence taking into account both individual and country-level characteristics.

METHOD
Within the Pricing Policies and Control of Tobacco in Europe (PPACTE) project, we conducted a face-to-face survey on smoking between January and July 2010 in 18 European countries, including 2,882 male and 2,254 female smokers with complete information on smoking dependence. The Heaviness of Smoking Index (HIS) was used as a measure of tobacco dependence. We correlated smoking prevalence and dependence using the country as unit of analysis. Moreover, we fitted multilevel logistic regression models in an individual-level analysis.

RESULTS
Country-specific prevalence of smoking was positively, although not significantly, correlated with the proportion of highly tobacco dependent smokers (overall rsp=0.203, p=0.419), both in men (rsp=0.235, p=0.347) and women (rsp=0.455, p=0.058). Using individual-level analysis, high dependence was positively related to age, and, although not significantly, to smoking prevalence, and inversely related to level of education. The lack of a smoking ban at home was positively related to smoking dependence.

CONCLUSIONS
Using both ecological and individual-level analyses, the relations between smoking prevalence and HSI were not significant, but in the opposite direction as compared to that assumed by the "hardening hypothesis". Therefore, our data provide empirical evidence against this theory, thus supporting the feasibility of an endgame strategy.


Item Type
Article
Publication Type
Irish-related, Article
Drug Type
Tobacco / Nicotine
Date
December 2015
Page Range
pp. 314-319
Publisher
Elsevier
Volume
81
EndNote
Accession Number
HRB (Not in collection)

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