If you read this blog very much, you know that smoking rates are much higher in those people with less education. Again, I'm not trying to be mean, it's just what the studies point out time and time again. But, does it make a difference what your major is in college? Do those going after a medical degree have lower smoking rates then, let's say, Western Civilization majors? How about those receiving medical assistant certification versus only having a GED?”
The International Journal of Behavioral Medicine (2011 Jan 19) will publish a study out of China that looked at this very question, called "Differences of Smoking Knowledge, Attitudes, and Behaviors Between Medical and Non-Medical Students". They found that medical students had lower rates of smoking than non-medical students. In fact, the upper class medical students had a much stronger attitude toward smoking than their non-med school counterparts.
The supposition of Han and others is quite simple. The more you learn in college about how devastating smoking is, the more you want to stay away from it.
What can we learn about this? Well, it doesn't seem like much of a stretch to say that the more we dispell myths about smoking the better. We need to educate people at a relatively early age to stop the cycle found within the smoking culture today. Somewhere along the way, we need to break the chain. This study tells us that education is a great way to do that.
