The first cigarette represents a kind of ordeal, a bad time to pass – with peers, far from the family and school environment. “I was 15 and I found it disgusting! “, remembers Emily, 20, a student in England in bio-veterinary sciences, like the many young people interviewed who all kept the word ” disgusting “ in mouth.
“Everything happens as if the disgust for tobacco was, precisely, what makes this experience so interesting: the stake indeed seems to face what revels and to overcome a sensation of the order of aversion” , describes the Aramis qualitative survey, published at the end of 2017 by the French Observatory for Drugs and Drug Addiction.
For Emily, there was no question of giving up such a rite of passage – social, cultural and emotional at the same time. “I said to myself: everyone is doing it, you have to try again otherwise you will look bad and not funny”, she says. Now the young woman smokes about ten cigarettes a day – “Rolls, because in England it costs a fortune”.
” It’s a trap “
Support for the construction of identity, the volutes of smoke still meet adolescent expectations today. “When you are not well in your body, when your physique changes, when you are hesitating, certain objects allow you as if by magic to be looked at differently., analyzes psychologist Jean-Pierre Couteron, specialist in addictology. If you are told that smoking this cigarette will make you a more mature and confident man or woman, you are going to take the plunge. “
“Experimenting before the age of 15 (…) means having two out of three risks of becoming a regular smoker” Daniel Thomas, cardiologist
Paul, 24, future professor of history and geography, testifies: “It’s the gesture that reassures, even if the taste is not terrible! We see the grown-ups who smoke, we want to be like them. It’s something that gives a sort of self-confidence: at least you know what to do with your ten fingers. “
The first contact with tobacco constitutes “A social conformation more than a transgression”, analyzes the Aramis survey. Between “The initiatory experience” and the “Banal and conventional passage”. This is also what Chloé, born in 2000, who tried “At 16, in the evening” after a few drinks. “In my family, there has been a lot of cancer from smoking. For me, it was impossible for me to get started. But when everyone is smoking around you, you get carried away. “
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