The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States had widespread behavioral and emotional impacts. At the time of the terrorist attacks, 400 smokers from the Washington, DC, area had been entered into a study comparing scheduled versus ad lib dosing regimens for tobacco inhalers. Mean smoking rates the month following September 11 were only slightly higher than mean smoking rates the month prior to September 11. Increases in smoking rates following the terrorist attacks, however, were significantly associated with scores on the Impact of Events Scale—Revised (Pearson’s r = .25, p < .01). Although the terrorist attacks were associated with acute increases in smoking and early relapse rates, the effect was relatively small and modestly associated with retrospective reports of the event’s emotional impact.

Many studies have found smokers’ quit history to correlate with quitting smoking, but little is known about the psychological processes explaining this relationship. Data from 4000 Dutch smokers demonstrate that quit history affects beliefs about stopping and (b) the degree to which self-efficacy predicts quit intention. It seems that a relatively unsuccessful history of prior quit attempts reduces self-efficacy over quitting and strengthens the relationship of self-efficacy with the intention to quit. Multiple levels of influence should be considered in interventions aimed at the adolescent smoker, including psychological, addiction, peer and parental influences. However, the mechanism by which these variables influence the process of smoking cessation in adolescents is not well elucidated. Instead of a direct relation, parental and peers smoking were inversely related to smoking cessation through tobacco dependence.

Tobacco dependence might function as a barrier to smoking cessation. Nicotine dependence, in particular withdrawal, was related to a high number of quit attempts and to remaining a current smoker. The urgent need for nicotine, craving for nicotine, smoking to avoid withdrawal, and the expectation of increased appetite or weight gain correctly classified smoking status in 72.1% of individuals through logistic regression analysis. Nicotine dependence is a strong factor that may partly explain the failure of a subpopulation of smokers to live abstinent. Population-based interventions should include measures of tobacco control and brief interventions carried out, for example, by experts in health care.

In most developed countries, a significant part of the population is still smoking despite comprehensive tobacco control policies. Among other reasons, many smokers may endorse self-exempting beliefs that help them to deny the smoking hazards for themselves. Self-exempting beliefs were quite widespread among participants and two of them were significant predictors of a low readiness to quit: considering that one’s cigarette consumption is too low to be harmful and believing that one’s way of smoking can protect from smoking-related diseases. Future nicotine control messages and interventions should specifically address these self-exempting beliefs that reduce smokers’ cognitive dissonance and then inhibit their willingness to stop.