Question: What do you do to persuade people to quit?

Abby Hunter answered on 11 Jun 2018:

It is very difficult to persuade someone to quit if they are not ready to or have no desire too. What helps is making sure that people are aware of the health risks of smoking and are aware of the benefits of stopping smoking. This can be started in schools but also doctors, dentists, midwives, pharmacists, nurses, health workers all need better training in order to support people who want to quit smoking. It is important that people have easy access to treatment and support which includes nicotine replacement therapy (patches, gum, etc) as well as behavioural support (a stop smoking councillor, or text messaging service). Electronic cigarettes are also very popular now and can help people quit smoking. They are 95% safer than an electronic cigarette.

Population interventions can be very effective. Things like the smoking ban in public places, banning the advertising of smoking, warnings on cigarettes packets, plain packaging have been proven to be effective in reducing the number of people who smoke.

Over the last decade there has been a steady decline in the number of people who do smoke, which can be attributed to the introduction of population interventions and treatment that is available