The 'Don't go cold turkey campaign'.

A third of smokers have admitted to sabotaging another person's attempt to quit, according to research.

Jealousy, guilt about their own habit and wanting a smoking "buddy" were among the reasons to wreck other people's quitting attempts.

The data, collated from 6,300 current and former smokers by Pfizer as part of its Don't Go Cold Turkey campaign, shows that 31% of smokers admitted being saboteurs. The study also found that 72% of smokers who have tried to quit think that someone has tried to overthrow their attempts.

"Even a brief conversation with their healthcare professional or local stop smoking service can increase their chances of success by up to four times, compared to going cold turkey. People should consider how they can positively influence their chances of quitting."

According to this article from 2006, quoting many sources, 90% of sucessful quitters go cold turkey,

In that New Year's is by far the biggest quitting time of the year, smokers are being bombarded with ads attempting to convince them to betray their natural instincts. What pharmaceutical companies dare not reveal is that during 2006 almost all long-term successful quitters again succeeded by ending all nicotine use, not by replacing it by use of the nicotine gum, nicotine patch or new "cherry flavored" nicotine lozenge (NRT or Nicotine Replacement Therapy), or by using designer drugs that attempt to imitate it (Chantix or Zyban).
Relying upon survey data, in 1992 the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that "approximately 90% of successful quitters have used a self-help quitting strategy, most by quitting abruptly." Looking back at survey data, in 2000 the Surgeon General reported that, "historically, the great majority of smokers (more than 90 percent) who successfully quit smoking did so 'on their own.'" In 2006 an Australian study following smoking patients of family practice physicians found that cold turkey quitters accounted for 1,942 of 2,207 former smokers, a whopping 88% of all success stories.

Ant this article suggests 80% of successful quitters going cold turkey an 93% on NRT users starting smoking again.

On the other side of the coin, health professionals would have beleive only 5% of smokers quit cold turkey.

Research has found that fewer than 5 percent of smokers succeed when they go cold turkey. "The data generally don't support cold turkey as a method of quitting," says Thomas Glynn, PhD, director of cancer science and trends and international cancer control for the American Cancer Society. "A better way is to combine counseling with medication."

So whose figures are correct? Now call my cynical but there is big money to be made in medication and counselling and the NHS stop smoking service considers someone a success when they have quit for four weeks. At that point they are cut off and logged as a statistic, yet four weeks is a very short time to guage success.

I quit for five months in December 2007. I had done a few weeks here and there in the past (Before blogging and before doing my homework on tobacco) and sometimes it was bloody hell. Then in Dec 2007 I got really annoyed with it. I was still getting used to going outside the pub where I worked, for a fag, I had only brought one with me that day, the pub was getting busy and I had no time to go to the shop and I just got annoyed with the whole thing.

I didn't have a ciggy or a craving for one until five months later when I had left the pubs, was sat in an office and suddenly wanted a smoke.

I know people who put on the patches on a regular basis and are still smoking. I do know one or two who have quit cold turkey and never looked back.

I firmly believe that those who want to quit will do so, without the help of all that pharma crap. I also believe that those who do not want to quit should not do so.

Getting in the way of anothers quit attempt through jealousy, if what is written above is true, is not a nice thing to do, however Pfizers 'Don't go cold turkey' campaign is not about assisting smokers, it's about selling them a whole bunch of crap.

Taking the tobacco pound from the smoker under the guise of public health