Smoking, IQ, Russia's Demographic Decline

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Researchers have recently determined that young smokers tend to have lower IQs than their non-smoking peers. In Russia, teen smoking is considered "an epidemic," even though the IQ of Russians is not much lower than that of western Europeans or white North Americans.

Russia has one of the world's highest smoking rates. The government says 44 million Russians smoke. That's a third of the population, including more than 60 percent of all males.

It's having a major effect on the country's health. Up to 400,000 Russians die each year from tobacco-related causes. But as health campaigns in the West encourage growing numbers of smokers to give up the habit, Russia is becoming increasingly important for international tobacco firms, and the number of Russia's newest smokers -- women and teenagers -- is skyrocketing.

...packs of Western cigarettes in Russia can cost as little as $0.50, compared to around $10 in some European countries.

"It's a lot easier for a child to buy a packet of cigarettes than a chocolate bar," she says.

Knorre says tobacco companies are now aggressively targeting women and teenagers. Around 15 percent of women smoke, twice more than in the early 1990s, and the number is steadily growing.

"You see mostly women's cigarettes behind store counters," she says. "They're thin, carry deceiving labels saying they're less harmful, and come in different flavors and bright packages." _Source

The billboard shown above is seen on Moscow streets. It reveals a lot about the perverse psychology of Russia under the thumb of Putin.

The infamous billboards appeared in Moscow in March. They depict a sleeping baby with a cigarette butt put down against her back. The slogan on the billboard says: “Smoking in child’s presence is a much bigger torture for him.” _MikeHitchen

Smoking -- particularly heavy smoking -- is a form of slow suicide. Ironically, it is also a form of Russian roulette. You never know whether your heart or your lungs will give out first. Whether cancer will settle in the mouth, throat, or lungs, before spreading to the brain and bones. Whether your blood vessels will close off, depriving organs and muscles of vital blood supply. You never really know.

It is not just a question of low IQ leading to smoking. It is also a question of will to live -- and what you have to live for. In Russia, there is little reason to sacrifice current pleasure or comfort for future gain. The future looks less and less likely to be a pleasant place, for those ethnic Russians who manage to survive. Why not smoke, drink, let things go?

Citizens of the US are allowing despotism to creep up on them incrementally. But Russians have never had freedom, never enjoyed an independent life, free from despotic governments. Americans are letting the wealths of freedom slip away after deciding that freedom is too much trouble to fight for. What does that suggest about national IQ?