Smoking an Indicator of Alcohol Misuse?

A study of 42,374 adults by the Yale School of Medicine revealed that people who smoke cigarettes are up to five times more likely to abuse alcohol than non-smokers. This finding could give healthcare providers another tool for screening their patients for alcohol misuse problems and present opportunities for intervention, the study authors say.

The Yale research indicated that people who were daily smokers were three times more likely to misuse alcohol than non-smokers and people who were non-daily smokers were five times more likely to abuse alcohol.

"This means cigarette smoking status can be used as a clinical indicator for alcohol misuse, which presents an opportunity for intervention," said the principal investigator, Sherry McKee, assistant professor of psychiatry, in a news release.

"Although brief screening and brief intervention provided in primary care settings are effective, clinicians do not frequently screen for alcohol misuse," McKee said. "This is a matter of concern because 26 percent of the U.S. population is drinking at hazardous levels, which puts them at increased risk for alcohol-related consequences such as injuries from motor vehicle crashes, hypertension, depression, and certain cancers.

"Only an estimated 30 percent of individuals who had a primary care visit reported being screened for an alcohol or drug use problem," McKee said. "Physicians are much more likely to ask patients whether and how often they smoke."

"This is the first study to document that individuals who are smokers, but don’t smoke every day, have the highest rates of problem drinking," McKee said. "Using smoking status as a 'red flag' for more aggressive assessment of alcohol use is a highly feasible and clinically sensible approach to screening."

The study was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

More Information:

• Smoking Indicator of Alcohol Misuse
  
• Nicotine Increases Alcohol Craving
  
• Help Quitting Cigarettes

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