Views of addiction have continued to evolve and change, driven variously by societal trends, medical opinion, and research findings. This article examines the question of whether addiction impairs or even destroys free will, based on a review of the research literature on smoking cigarettes. Tobacco addiction is probably the most common and problematic form of addiction worldwide, especially given its adverse health effects that include millions of premature deaths.
It is now generally accepted that cigarette smoking is addictive. A central dispute is whether regular smoking brings about a change in the person that impels him or her to continue smoking, in effect depriving the person of voluntary control over his or her behavior (at least in connection with smoking). Volkow (2015) has even defined addiction as a disease of free will. The opposing position is that smoking remains voluntary behavior that the person chooses to continue or not (e.g., Lewis, 2016). The difference between these positions has extensive implications for psychological and philosophical theory, for motivation, for drug treatment and intervention policies, for legal assignment of responsibility, and for government policy.
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Keywords: Addiction, Smoking, Cigarettes, Free will, Choice, Voluntary behavior
Views of addiction have continued to evolve and change, driven variously by societal trends, medical opinion, and research findings. This article examines the question of whether addiction impairs or even destroys free will, based on a review of the research literature on smoking cigarettes. Tobacco addiction is probably the most common and problematic form of addiction worldwide, especially given its adverse health effects that include millions of premature deaths.
It is now generally accepted that cigarette smoking is addictive. A central dispute is whether regular smoking brings about a change in the person that impels him or her to continue smoking, in effect depriving the person of voluntary control over his or her behavior (at least in connection with smoking). Volkow (2015) has even defined addiction as a disease of free will. The opposing position is that smoking remains voluntary behavior that the person chooses to continue or not (e.g., Lewis, 2016). The difference between these positions has extensive implications for psychological and philosophical theory, for motivation, for drug treatment and intervention policies, for legal assignment of responsibility, and for government policy.