[defaultname]

"given the number of people I know who've had a first cigarette and not touched a second"

Okay, now exclude people who did that as children, an experience after which they had zero access to cigarettes. That same survey if demanding an adult experience would be much, much closer.

Everyone has a "Jimmy lit up a smoke and I took a drag and coughed my guts out when I was 9" story.

Overwhelmingly people either had a problem smoking (one that they had to quit through extreme effort), or they never smoked cigarettes at all as adults.

The one "exception" I can recall is a "social" smoker who would tell everyone that she controlled it by only smoking when she drank/at social events, a consequence of which was that she sought drinking opportunities at every venue. She was a problem smoker that turned it into also being a problem drinker.

[ejolto]

I've smoked tobacco on somewhere between 5 and 15 occasions over a decade since becoming an adult, but I didn't become a daily smoker or addicted to smoking. Am I just an extreme outlier?

[blueflow]

Another data point:

I'm some kind of introvert, if i hang out with people, my social "battery" drains and i get tired. I smoke because it gives me much more time before my social "battery" is empty. I don't smoke otherwise.

Right now i'm at two packs a year.

[ejolto]

That sounds like a lot to me, almost once a week. Then again it's normal to drink that often without being considered an alcoholic.

[girvo]

A person would usually smoke more than one cigarette at an outing, so its more acute than chronic, I'd assume. Not sure what impact that would have in terms of health differences, but in terms of addiction potential it definitely would.