Stop Smoking Programs

There are very few smokers who - at one time or another - have never thought about quitting their smoking habit. But, like all addictions, in the end it comes down to the individual wanting to give up. You can never tell an addict that they should give up their addiction - they need to have the willpower to give up because they are desperate to achieve some personal goal or satsfaction.

So what are the most important goals that smokers try to achieve? Here are what I believe are the top 3:

1. Save money

Smoking is now an incredibly expensive addiction in most developed nations in the Western world. Whereas the price of street drugs has fallen due to increased supply and demand, cigarettes and other tobacco products have increased in price. This is mainly due to government action to significantly increase taxation on tobacco products with the aim of forcing smokers to give up.

In the UK, 20 cigarettes cost around £5 ($9). This means that a modest smoker getting through 10 cigarretes a day will spend around £75 ($135) in a typical month. That’s £900 ($1620) each year.

Just consider the expense for a heavy smoker getting through 20-30 cigarettes each day!

The current “credit crunch” with increasing mortgage costs, fuel costs, heating, food and tax increases means that most people are very keen to save money by cutting back on unnecessary purchases.

This gives smokers a very strong incentive to quit smoking.

2. Improve health

All smokers are well aware that smoking is bad for their health. Even if they don’t believe that they will succumb to lung cancer,; they invariably are aware that their breathing is affected. Most smokers encounter shortness of breath when they undergo any sort of physical exertion. And we have all heard the typical “smokers cough” from anyone who smokes on a very regular basis.

It usually takes a bout of poor health to convince a smoker that their habit is doing them serious long-term harm. Once they wake up to this fact, this can be a big motivator to putting them on the road to quitting.

3. Cleaner lifestyle

Anyone who has lived with a smoker knows that it is a physically dirty habit.

There is the cigarette ash that not only fills ashtrays but also always ends up on furniture, carpets, floors, clothes, and as a general layer of dirt throughout the house.

The brown tar from the smoke ends up coating walls and ceilings giving them a distinctive brown tinge, as well any other objects in a room. TVs, computers, hi-fi equipment also get coated in this brown gunge that can be difficult to remove.

And then there is the general smell that all smokers have from their habit. The tar and smoke gets into their clothes and skin (I’m sure we’ve all seen a habitual smoker’s nicotine-stained fingers) and they are generally unpleasant people to be standing close to - especially in today’s society where personal cleanliness and hygeine is highly rated.

In future posts, I’ll have more to say about the problems smnokers face and how they can quit smoking with a variety of stop smoking programs and products.