February 11, 2007
Why Stop Smoking: The Real Reasons To Quit
If you’re a smoker, you’re probably sick to death of the anti-cigarette lobby spinning out the same old lines about how you’re damaging your body and health. You’re not an idiot, you know all these facts. Heck, you’d be hard-pressed not to know the facts given that you have a big warning sign blasted in your face every time you look at a packet of cigarettes. You know that smoking can cause infertility, lung cancer, emphysema and heart disease.
So why do the anti-smoking lobby continue to throw out the same warnings? I suppose their theory is that if you hear the facts enough times, then eventually it will profoundly hit home. But if you’re still smoking, then obviously their tactics are failing. As a former cigarette addict myself, I can completely empathise with the smoker’s frustration. How can these people, who in all likelihood have never experienced the addiction of tobacco, see fit to lecture them? “Why stop smoking” is a question which is almost always met with the health answer, but for reasons I will shortly expand on, this is entirely the wrong question to present the smoker with.
Every smoker knows that the tobacco habit is disastrous for their health. That’s a given, but obviously they continue to smoke. This is where anti-smokers run out of ideas and become dumbfounded, because they cannot see past the health issue. However, all smokers and former smokers know that the humble cigarette provides a hundred daily uses. We feel that smoking alleviates anxiety, tastes good after meals, acts as a time-passer during conversations and nights out, a trigger for creativity or meditation. There truly is an abundance of reasons why smokers continue what they do.
It is these “reasons” that compel the smoker to continue the habit, and this is what health campaigners fail to comprehend. The secret is this: smokers do not need reasons to stop, they need fewer reasons to continue.
