Smoking has many deep, deep roots that are intertwined in our culture and environment otherwise. This is in part what makes it so dangerous, that is that it is so natural. In fact there are doctors practicing now that as young doctors were suggesting that people take up smoking in order to reduce the stress in our lives. The other problem is that smoking isn't the only quiet killer that we have to deal with. If we get rid of smoking than we will start dealing with the looming crises of obesity, high fat diets, inactivity, pollution, and on and on. This is not to say that we should give up but rather not be totally distracted from other public health issues.
Anyway due to the recent awareness there has been a lot of work into figuring out how to help people stop smoking. The results of all this work is fortunately encouraging. The major concern was that it wouldn't be a good use of the physicians clinic time to counsel and manage smoking cessation efforts. The problem was this counseling was one of the key components to successful treatment of the addiction. Then people started looking not so much at how much it was costing to have doctors spend time treating this issue but how much it was costing to allow people to continue to smoke. The numbers are staggering, and very much in favor of paying physicians to treat this addiction to nicotine.
So all that to say that doctors have gotten good at helping people decide to stop smoking and to make good on this promise. Treatment usually involves a very well proven combination of frequent office visits for counseling, contracts to quit, recruiting the support of family and friends, nicotine replacement, and other pharmacotherapies that help to make a drastic but life saving change. So if you want to live but haven't made the plunge, please seek out a well trained and qualified physician. It's crucial to the success of your goal to stop smoking.
