Nicotine Addiction: Cessation
Key points
- The process of stopping smoking is often a cyclical one, with the smoker sometimes making multiple attempts to quit and failing before finally being successful.
- Physician advice to quit smoking, particularly around an acute illness, is a powerful trigger for cessation attempts, with up to half of patients who are advised to quit making a cessation effort.
- Approximately 70 to 80% of smokers would like to quit smoking, approximately one-third of current smokers attempt to quit each year, and 90% of these unassisted attempts fail.
- Clinician-based smoking interventions should encourage smokers to try to quit and to use different forms of cessation assistance with each new cessation attempt rather than focusing exclusively on immediate cessation at the time of the first visit.
The process of stopping smoking is often a cyclical one, with the smoker sometimes making multiple attempts to quit and failing before finally being successful. Approximately 70 to 80% of smokers would like to quit smoking, approximately one-third of current smokers attempt to quit each year, and 90% of these unassisted attempts fail. Clinician-based smoking interventions should encourage smokers to try to quit and to use different forms of cessation assistance with each new cessation attempt rather than focusing exclusively on immediate cessation at the time of the first visit.
Physician advice to quit smoking, particularly around an acute illness, is a powerful trigger for cessation attempts, with up to half of patients who are advised to quit making a cessation effort. Other triggers include the cost of cigarettes, media campaigns, and changes in rules to restrict smoking in the workplace.
Written and revised by
Andrey Nailor, M.D.
Our doctors write and review articles for accuracy and keep them up to date.
health.am provides general information, not medical advice. Always consult a qualified health professional about your own health.
Explore health topics
More in this topic
Mental Health →
NewsSons of cocaine-using fathers may resist addiction to drug, Penn Medicine study suggests
A father's cocaine use may make his sons less sensitive to the drug and thereby more likely to resist addictive behaviors, suggests new findings from an animal study presented by Penn Medicine researchers at…
12 November 2013
NewsPrescription drug addiction: the treatment challenge
As misuse of prescription drugs increases, treating addiction to these drugs has become as crucial as preventing it. Yet best practice in this area remains elusive. David Holmes reports. Last June, the UN flagship World…
29 September 2013
NewsIU research attributes high rates of smoking among mentally ill to addiction vulnerability
People with mental illness smoke at much higher rates than the overall population. But the popular belief that they are self-medicating is most likely wrong, according to researchers at the Indiana University School of…
