How To Quit Smoking – How To Stop Smoking For Good With These Two Easy Methods
What are the current trends in quitting smoking?
The number of smokers in the United States is declining, as public awareness regarding the dangers of smoking have become more widely accepted and more local communities are banning smoking in public places. Among Americans, smoking rates shrunk by nearly half in three decades (from the mid-1960s to mid-1990s), falling to 23% of adults by 1997. However, worldwide, especially in poor countries, the number of smokers is growing. In the developing world, tobacco consumption is rising by 3.4% per year. In the developing world, concerns about the use of tobacco are not considered as important as concerns about adequate nutrition, safe drinking water, and communicable diseases.
Worldwide, especially in poor countries, the number of smokers is growing. In the developing world, tobacco consumption is rising by 3.4% per year.
What is the prevalence of tobacco use?
Prevalence refers to the current number of people suffering from a particular illness or engaged in a particular activity relative to the population at large over a specified period of time. Point prevalence refers to a defined point in time (such as January 1, 2009) while period prevalence refers to a defined period in time (such as January 1, 2008 through January 1, 2009). It is defined in terms of the ratio of people with a condition compared to the total population. Today one out of every five adults smokes regularly.
A 2007 Time magazine article on the “Science of Addiction” reported that there are 71.5 million tobacco users in the United States, of whom 23.4% are men and 18.5% are women. Among cigarette smokers, the lowest rate of smokers live in the western section of the country and the highest live in the Midwest and the southeast tobacco-producing states. The proportion of smokers in the adult population has fallen from a high of 46% in 1950
to 21% in 2004. The World Health Organization in 2003 estimated that there were 1.3 billion smokers worldwide. The numbers may vary from source to source, but all of the data point to a worldwide epidemic of pandemic proportions.
Smoking Prevalence
Percent of Smokers
Region Men -Women
Africa – 29 – 4
United States – 35 – 22
Eastern Mediterranean – 35 – 4
Europe – 46 – 26
Southeast Asia – 44 – 4
Western Pacific – 60 – 8
The numbers are expected to reach 7 billion by 2025. The growth will be among people living in poor developing countries and the uneducated.
What are the mortality rates from smoking in the United States? Worldwide?
Mortality rates are the rates of deaths in a population during a given time and in a given place. Smoking kills over 435,000 U.S. citizens each year. More Americans die each year from tobacco than from fires, car accidents, illegal drugs, murders, and AIDS combined. Tobacco kills more people in two days than crack and cocaine kill in a year. More than 50,000 Americans die from secondhand smoke, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Sixteen million people lost their lives because of an addiction to nicotine between 1950 and 2000.
These numbers add up to a thousand American deaths each day from smoking cigarettes. Most of the deaths occur to people between the ages of 35 and 69 years. Nearly five million people died from smoking worldwide in 2000, and smoking killed nearly as many people in developing countries as in developed countries. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that tobacco kills a person every 10 seconds worldwide and, at the current growth rate for both the general population and number of smokers, the death rate from smoking may exceed 10 million a year in 30 years.
How successful will I be at quitting smoking?
Epidemiologic data report that 70% of the 45 million smokers in the United States today want to quit, and approximately 44% try to quit each year. The vast majority of these attempts is without support and is unsuccessful. Only 4% to 7% will actually succeed. These statistics may discourage both smokers and clinicians because the majority of smokers struggle through multiple periods of abstinence and relapse. Because of the chronic, relapsing nature of tobacco dependency, the most effective way to understand and treat it is by recognizing it as a chronic disease. By approaching it as a chronic disease, clinicians will better accept its relapsing nature and the requirement for ongoing, long-term care, which includes continued patient education, counseling, and advice over time.
These strategies are similar to the way you would approach other chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, or asthma. The introduction of numerous effective treatments in the past 15 to 20 years now gives the clinician and patient many additional options over the long haul. Clinicians should provide tobacco-dependent patients with brief advice, counseling, and appropriate medication. Assessing and treating tobacco use as a chronic disease generally leads to greater patient satisfaction and improved success at eventually quitting.
Joseph’s comment:
Quite honestly, while I was smoking, I did not think I could be successful. Something inside me kept making me try different techniques. It wasn’t until I put the cigarette down for a few 24 hour periods that I really started to believe I could be successful, and there was hope for me becoming a nonsmoker.
The introduction of numerous effective treatments in the past 15 to 20 years now gives the clinician and patient many additional options over the long haul.
