Simple Steps to Give Up Smoking
Unlike the 1940s (when most people smoked), today just over 11% of people in England smoke cigarettes (this is still around 6 million people) which causes health problems and cigarette litter (butts fall down storm drains and go into the sea, or if dropped on land, can cause fires and wildfires.
If you smoke, invest in a small personal ashtray. This immediately extinguishes cigarettes until you find a bin, preventing litter and fires. Charcoal purifying bags can absorb and remove odours from homes and cars, without chemical air fresheners.
Just like cigarettes, vets recommend to keep vaping equipment (e-cigarettes and refill containers) away from pets.
All shops that sell vapes must by law take old ones back for recycling (they are fire hazards when littered). Also read how councils can prevent cigarette litter.
Smoking is the world’s leading cause of premature death, with tobacco killing half its users (with more deaths from passive smoking). Main health conditions caused are lung/oral cancer, heart disease, stroke, blood clots, tooth and gum decay, and wrinkled skin.
Abroad, there are 1.3 billion smokers, the highest numbers in Nauru (an island in Oceania), Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands (South Pacific), many Asian countries, along with Jordan, Croatia, Bulgaria and Andorra (next to Spain).
Countries that smoke the least by ratio are Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland and Luxembourg.
It’s surprising therefore that despite the high cost of cigarettes, most people who smoke are in low-income countries. And those who don’t are in the wealthiest countries.
Some believe this is that on low incomes, there is ‘nothing much to do’, so people start smoking, and then become addicted. More than half of all people who smoke wish to quit in the next few months.
What’s positive is that we’ve moved on from idolising chain-smoking anorexic models. Today’s role models tend to be healthy fit women like football and tennis players, who eat well, exercise and don’t smoke or drink.
Practical Tips to Quit Smoking
- Learn to cook healthy meals, and take a supplement to ensure you have vitamins and minerals to help your nerves and rebalance your nutrition.
- Exercise also releases endorphins, which lift your mood without nicotine. Physical activity also helps manage weight, a concern for many who quit smoking.
- Change your routine. Stay away from smoke-filled environments and find activities that don’t tempt you. Take up an evening class to learn French, instead of visiting the pub (with outside smokers) each night.
- Open a savings account and put the money you would spend on cigarettes into it. Someone who smokes 20 cigarettes a day spends over £100 a week (that’s £5000 a year you could spend on something else).
Chewing gum is not the answer (it has its own health issues, and most gum contains pet-lethal xylitol, which harms dogs and other creatures, when littered on the ground). If you chew gum, use a gumdrop bin (sent off for recycling). Or chew organic mints instead!
NHS Quit Smoking website has a good chart to inspire, on the quick benefits to your body, when you give up smoking (or vaping).
It only takes a few weeks for your body to receive huge benefits, with most coughs improving within months, heart attack risk halved in a year, and lung cancer risk halved in 10 years.
If you don’t wish to quite smoking right now, Smokey Treats at least use filters made from unbleached wood pulp, unbleached paper and with compostable outer wrap. Presently sold in Germany and South Africa, but soon elsewhere. Greenbutts make biodegradable cigarette filters.
Why Allen Carr’s EasyWay Method Works
You’ve likely heard of people who take local courses using Allen Carr’s Easyway. Despite it being way more successful than nicotine patches, for a long while if did not qualify for NICE evidence, so was not available on the NHS. It is now in some areas, so ask your GP if you can be funded for a local course, if one is available.
Allen was an athlete who began to smoke while doing National Service in 1952, and then became a chartered accountant. He was eventually smoking three to five packs a day, and would ‘cry like a baby’ when he couldn’t give up.
Long story short, he realised that smoking is not a physical addiction to nicotine (otherwise after five days without it, you would be ‘cured’). It’s a mental addiction, and his method has helped millions of people to give up (newsreader Krishnan Guru-Murthy gave up smoking in just four hours). Allen Carr also uses a method to give up vaping.
Think nicotine patches work, do all the ads? In fact, they almost certainly don’t in most cases. The quote that ‘nicotine patches double your chance of success’, simply means they are around 6.2% effective (compared to 3.4% for trying to give up without help). That’s not really effective, is it?
But there is a huge nicotine patch industry, that tries to make it look like the patches do work. In fact, everything to help you give up is mental: support, changes of habits, changes of lifestyle, and a different mindset. The idea is to take you back to when you didn’t smoke.
Many people on earth have incredible stressful situations, but many of them don’t smoke, vape, drink or take drugs. They deal with problems in a healthier way, and you can too.
Who Profits from the Cigarette Industry?
Smoking is like paying someone to kill you. They’re rich, you’re dead. Anonymous
Many companies make billions from the sale of cigarettes (many of which by the way are tested on rats, mice and dogs who are forced to inhale smoke and have tar applied to their skin for several hours).
Social Market Foundation says that despite being highly taxed, the cigarette industry’s taxes are dwarfed by its profits, and yet the NHS then has to pay a huge amount of money to help people with diseases caused by smoking (not to blame them as cigarettes are highly addictive, but it’s a financial fact).
Smoking is the leading cause of death and disability in the UK:
Smoking costs society in England £43.7bn a year through a combination of lost economic productivity and health/social care costs. This rises to £78.3bn, if the cost of early deaths due to smoking is included. In 2024, smoking cost the public finances in England £16.bn, more than double the £6.8bn raised through tobacco taxes. ASH (Action on Smoking & Health)
ALDI and LIDL supermarkets refuse to stock cigarettes. So why don’t the other supermarkets follow suit? People who smoke could still buy from newsagents and tobacconists, proving that supermarkets put profits before public health.
Don’t Smoke (just because some celebrities do)
A couple of decades ago, a lot of young women were smoking to keep thin, emulating supermodels like Kate Moss, who was stunningly beautiful, but never really looked healthy. Make life decisions for you, not because magazines create a ‘brand’.
Thankfully today, things have moved on. We have ‘stars like tennis pro Emma Raducanu (fit not thin, and no doubt does not smoke, or else she could not play pro-level tennis). These are the kind of young women that teenagers now aspire to be like, a healthy and positive step in the right direction.
Kate Moss says she is aware not to promote smoking, but even today she has not quit, showing just how addictive cigarettes are.
