Are we more or less likely to smoke tobacco?

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Most disorders in the DSM have a higher than average population rate of smoking; while autism spectrum disorders are explicitly otherwise. They are very few disorders in the DSM that have lower than the average population smoking rates - autism spectrum disorders are there.

(Citation: http://www.psy-journal.com/article/S0165-1781(03)00123-9/abstract)

Smokers say they get a buzz when smoking, but I'm already buzzing

I can see how AS people are less likely to smoke cigarettes. We resist (or don't even get into situations with) peer pressure to smoke cigarettes in our teens, are more likely to obey laws saying you have to be 18 to smoke them, and by the time we're 18 we've got the maturity not to start! It's all about the religious following of rules that make sense.

I love to sing, I'm also asthmatic, and highly allergic, so yeah, I would never try either.

EDIT: so many reasons to hate smokers smoking near me, the smell of it also offends my olfactory sensory, giving me sensory issues. Just add it to my list. Especially when I was in college, those douches who would not light up in the smoking zones, but in front of the door to a building and blow it in my face as I was going through the door.

I smoked for a long time and never realized how bad it smelled until I quit and sat behind a smoker in a college class. The guy reeked like a dirty ashtray.

Smoking looks like one of the most disgusting things one can do. I've been around enough campfires, I have no desire to inhale smoke.

I've never touched a cigarette and I never will. Due to a premature birth, I have weak lungs which are very susceptible to irritants, meaning if I did ever try smoking, it would probably kill me twice as fast as anyone else. My dad used to smoke twenty-odd years ago before I was born, but my mom convinced him to quit (basically by threatening him, if I remember correctly, that she'd leave him if he didn't). My older cousin smokes too; he's only twenty-four and it smells terrible, he still lives at home, but apparently none of my relatives have been successful at convincing him to quit.

I felt that the choices in the poll lacked one best suited to me. I experimented with smoking on occasion. I had my first cigarette at age 13 which I snitched from my grandfather's girlfriend. I only had a few others before turning 18 after which I would smoke an occasional cigar and no more than a few cigarettes a month. I never considered myself a smoker and have always been very careful not so smoke frequently enough to become addicted. I have not smoked any tobacco, (or anything else) in the past 10 months and have no plans to again.

Basically what I said above.

We tend to follow rules and be influenced by elders. And tend not to have peers (ie lotsa friends) in the first place. So dont have to contend with 'peer pressure"as much as nt's.

I've never smoked - when I was a kid, my parents were always emphasizing to me how unhealthy a habit it was; how it could make you very sick and even kill you.

When we'd visit my grandparents when I was little, we would sometimes all go to this Chinese restaurant in Winnipeg (my grandparents lived right on the Canadian border) and the owner there would always come and hang out with me...he'd make me these little animals out of sliced vegetables, and he was very cheerful. He also smoked, and he would sometimes take out his pack and hold it out to me saying, "You want one? It's very good!" (He was just kidding) and then I would become indignant and read him the riot act about why he shouldn't be smoking. Poor guy, getting lectured at in front of his customers by a 4 year old, lol....

He died some years ago from a tobacco - related disease and his restaurant was bought by someone who wanted to sell short - order American food.

Neither one of my parents ever smoked, either. When my dad was in high school, he was involved in a drama production and the part he was playing called for the actor to smoke a cigarette. He thought he'd try one to see if he could get into the role, and it made him incredibly sick. He tried to get a different part after that.

My mom tried smoking when she was in college, but she didn't find it "interesting" at all and just never pursued the habit further.

When my stepfather was a teenager, his mom found a pack of cigarettes in either his or one of his bro's drawers (they didn't really smoke them, they probably just carried them around to look "cool") and his mom called all her sons into the kitchen lit a cigarette for each one, and told them to smoke it. They did, and they all got really sick and as far as I know, none of them smoke today.

My Grandma's cool like that.

As for me, I don't smoke and I never will, for myriad reasons:

1.) It's an expensive habit and there are things I'd much rather spend money on than cigarettes.

2.) They can cause a ton of health problems and I have enough of those to worry about as is (cholestrol, triglycerides, anxiety and depression)

3.) I own lots of plushies, blankets, and other soft things, and tobacco leaves an odor.

4.) Tobacco SMELLS and is messy.

5.) My dorm doesn't allow it.

6.) My parents would be horrified if I started.

7.) The cravings late at night and in the mornings.

8.) It adds to the pollution in the air and makes it that much harder for those with asthma, COPD, and lung disease to breathe.

In summation, it's just a lot of trouble I don't need.

*Steps off soapbox*

I don't fit any of the options if rare tee totalling is not considered being a smoker.

The tobacco shops used to be more classy, more like the old, Victorian smoking room, less like the ghetto, hole-in-the-wall head shops with crack pipes and ticky-tacky cutlery, like we see now, at every second or third intersection. I thought of tobacco as a luxury item, for special occasions, or an outdoor smell, have typically been one of the only people I know, who doesn't consider it a necessity.

The air would be so thick, in the cars and mobile homes, when we went to visit poorer relatives, that I would get flu-like symptoms for the first three or four days of my yearly visit. Society has since come to think of it as immoral, to hotbox small kids. And, I have since come to think of this kind of smoke (especially in Cadillacs, with square lines, decals like the stitching on western jeans, twangy country music) as cheap.



It was puzzling to me, how my smoking aunt died of pancreatic cancer, ruined a bedroom, bleeding out on a bed, scared the hell out my large, extended family, but all my cousins (Britney Spears' predecessors) took up the habit in the same year.

Yet, I did not feel convicted about the banning of smoking in restaurants and parks. It just seemed normal that I was the odd man out.

The only thing more disgusting than seeing an otherwise pretty woman sucking on a lit cigarette is seeing a dog eating its own vomit.

people may find it sigusting, to a certain extent it is to me as well, that said treating a person like s**t for it makes the person doing the "treating" far more disgusting, as a human being and not just a habit.

that said i still use normal tobacco with cannabis, it adulterates the experience and tastes better, wouldnt smoke a ciggerette in itself.
best thing is still a vaporizer.

I don't think being on the spectrum is either a precursor or a detractor on whether or not someone smokes, since everyone on the spectrum is different.

I tried to like it, but it never felt good to me. I don't see how people can get addicted to tobacco; it has never felt enjoyable.

Cannabis on the other hand... wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!

I've used cannabis, but the only time I ever used tobacco was inadvertently, at a party when I took a hit of what I thought was straight cannabis, but was actually a spliff (cannabis + tobacco.)

Cannabis is bad for your lungs similar to cigarettes, but you smoke far less of that than cigarettes in general. It's nowhere near as addictive as tobacco, there are some health benefits, and most people I know would rather have me smoke marijuana than cigarettes!