As the festive season gears up, many a party-goer who professes to be a non-smoker will light up. But are these so-called social smokers kidding themselves about their habit?

Beth, a 27-year-old teacher, says she is a non-smoker. Yet every so often when she's out with friends, she makes a dent in a packet of fags. Not hers, mind. Only smokers buy their own cigarettes, she says. Instead she cadges smokes off her fellow drinkers. "I just find that sometimes I need a cigarette. This craving is always when I'm in a pub or club after I've had a few. I don't know if it is self-loathing or a physical reaction to the tobacco, but my hangovers are worse if I've been smoking." And with December's social whirl ahead, Beth says she will probably smoke more in a month than during the year as a whole. "I can stop any time I want to; I'm no nicotine addict. But I won't say no to a cigarette or 10 at the office Christmas party. It's a chance to let my hair down - and drinking and smoking a bit too much gets me in a party mood." Helen, a recent graduate, says she hadn't smoked before she went to university. "In a new town with new friends, I started to say yes in pubs or at parties when someone offered around a packet of fags. Now if I have a drink in one hand, I often have a cigarette in the other." While a number of people describe themselves as social - or binge - smokers, only a fraction of the UK's 12 million smokers are genuinely able to light up occasionally, says Professor Martin Jarvis, a smoking cessation specialist at University College London. "There's quite a lot of kidding going on, not only of the outside world but of yourself. It's like someone saying 'Oh, I eat like a bird', yet they tip the scales at 20 stone. People under-report how much they do things that are bad for them." Many of those who say they are social smokers either lie about their consumption, or develop a nicotine addiction and so start to smoke regularly. Professor Gerard Hastings, of the Centre for Tobacco Control Research, says smoke-free workplaces mean many of those who only light up at evenings or weekends are not social smokers at all, but smokers denied the opportunity to have a puff at work. "We did a study of student smokers here in Scotland. Because social smokers think they don't have a problem - or say they are non-smokers - stop smoking messages seem irrelevant to them." Body shock So is this festive binge less harmful than regular smoking? Yes and no. "Smoking 20 cigarettes in one night then abstaining is less harmful as it gives your system a chance to recover, and your smoke exposure would be less," says Professor Jarvis. "Nicotine is an aversive drug - if you go over a small dose, you feel very unwell, so a binge smoker is not going to inhale each of those 20 cigarettes as deeply as their first one. But it is also an addictive drug, and if you smoke occasionally, it can be a slippery slope." While more men than women die of lung disease, the warning signs are there that smoking is affecting women's health. While life expectancy is on the up, it is rising more slowly for women than for men, in part due to smoking patterns. A Cancer Research study earlier this year found that women were smoking at a younger age and were less likely to give up than men. Lung cancer has overtaken breast cancer as a cause of death. Smoke-free pubs Yet the number of people smoking in the UK has fallen and continues to come down, says Professor Jarvis. Currently about a quarter of the adult population smokes, 26% of men and 24% of women. This compares with a 1950s peak of 80% of men, and a peak among women a decade later of 45%. Should smoking in indoor public places be banned across the UK - particularly controversial plans for smoke-free pubs - social smoking could well be kicked in the butt. But while there is considerable support among smokers and non-smokers alike for a ban on lighting up in restaurants, shops and offices, there is considerably less enthusiasm for a crack-down in the nation's watering holes. In a YouGov poll published on Monday, 89% of smokers surveyed said they would oppose such a ban, a feeling echoed by one-third of former smokers and one-fifth of non-smokers. For this habit condemned as anti-social is, for some, part of their social lives.

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