Study stipulates link between smoking policy and suicide risk
A new study published by the Department of Psychiatry at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis on July 16 in the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research, has found a correlation between smoking policy and suicide risk. Previous research showing that smokers are more likely to commit suicide than non-smokers has been linked to the increased incidence of smoking among individuals with psychiatric disorders – a group with higher suicide rates.
On average, 14 out of 10 000 individuals commit suicide each year in the United States (US), with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) citing a total of 40 000 suicides in the year 2010 alone, making it the 10th leading cause of death in the US. The new study implicates smoking directly as a risk factor for likelihood of suicide. Researchers analyzed suicide rates in the United States during the time period from 1990 and 2004, in correlation with the implementation of anti-smoking policies.
“States started raising their cigarette taxes, first as a way to raise revenue but then also as a way to improve public health,” said lead researcher Richard Grucza. “Higher taxes and more restrictive smoking policies are well-known ways of getting people to smoke less,” he added. “So it set a natural experiment, which shows that the states with more aggressive policies also had lower rates of smoking. The next thing we wanted to learn was whether those states experienced any changes in suicide rates, relative to the states that didn’t implement these policies as aggressively,” he explained.
Results of the study found that suicide rates were up to 15 percent lower than the national average in states with aggressively higher cigarette taxes and public smoking policy. Additionally, states with lower cigarette taxes and lax policies on public smoking saw an increase of 6 percent in suicide rates compared to the national average. The study also elucidated that there was a 10 percent decrease in suicide risk associated with each dollar increase in cigarette taxes.
“If you’re not a smoker, or not likely ever to become a smoker, then your suicide risk shouldn’t be influenced by tobacco policies,” Grucza said. “So the fact that we saw this influence among people who likely were smokers provides additional support for our idea that smoking itself is linked to suicide, rather than some other factor related to policy.”
The direct causation factor between smoking and suicide is unknown, but researchers attribute the risk to nicotine as an addictive drug. Researchers stipulate that, similar to other drugs, the chronic use of nicotine leading to depression or anxiety could explain the link to suicide.
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