Neuroscience Research Center, Kerman, Iran.
Int J Psychiatry Med. 2012;43(3):279-92. doi: 10.2190/PM.43.3.g.
Tobacco smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke are a major threat to human health worldwide. The effort to prevent tobacco use should be regarded as an important public health strategy. Given the significance of religion and spirituality in the daily life of more than 90% of the world's population, the relationship of religion and smoking should be seen as a critical research area. Religions are many and varied, but most value human well-being highly and so do not approve of tobacco use, even though they do not prohibit it entirely. In recent years, researchers have shown more interest in the subject of religion and health, including drug and tobacco use. Differences of focus and methodology notwithstanding, most studies have ascertained a deterrent role for religion as regards tobacco use, and several mechanisms have been proposed to explain the negative relationship between religion or spirituality and smoking. Many of the studies, however, suffer from shortcomings that need to be acknowledged and addressed, such as using nonstandard data-gathering tools, lack of a unified definition of religion or spirituality, and paucity of research in non-Christian and developing countries. Finally, the cross-sectional nature of many of the studies makes the meaningful interpretation of findings difficult.
吸烟和接触二手烟是全世界人类健康的主要威胁。预防烟草使用应被视为一项重要的公共卫生策略。鉴于宗教和精神信仰在全球超过 90%的人口日常生活中的重要性，宗教与吸烟的关系应该被视为一个关键的研究领域。宗教形式多样，但大多数都非常重视人类福祉，因此不赞成吸烟，尽管它们并非完全禁止。近年来，研究人员对宗教与健康（包括药物和烟草使用）的关系表现出了更大的兴趣。尽管重点和方法存在差异，但大多数研究都证实了宗教对烟草使用具有抑制作用，并提出了几种机制来解释宗教或精神信仰与吸烟之间的负相关关系。然而，许多研究存在需要承认和解决的缺陷，例如使用非标准的数据收集工具、缺乏对宗教或精神信仰的统一定义以及在非基督教和发展中国家的研究匮乏。最后，许多研究的横断面性质使得对研究结果的解释变得困难。
