‘Smokefree’ is a catchy neologism used by the NHS Smokefree campaign. It’s supported by Public Health England which is part of the UK government’s Department of Health. So it’s quite kosher.

But what’s this? The Leicester City Stop Smoking Service at a quick glance looks similar:

As we can see, it offers not just any old licensed products to assist your efforts to become smoke-free, but traditional licensed products! Well, bless their cotton socks. The manager, Louise Ross, comments: ‘Every time I see someone vaping I think: that’s another person NOT smoking a cigarette.’

And if the gung-ho Ms Ross were to observe a member of the public going about their business who is neither smoking nor vaping, would she think: ‘That’s another person NOT smoking a cigarette’? It seems to her the normal state of non-smoking is regarded as remarkable and a matter for congratulations.

In either event she seems to have a lot to be pleased about. How does she do it? With vulgarity. I promise I am not making this up. On the redoubtable Leicester City Stop Smoking Service website you soon come across a YouTube video of which the first written words, I blush to tell you, are: ‘Have you got the balls to stop smoking?’ It’s narrated by Gerry Taggart who, you will be glad to know, is a ‘Former Northern Island and Leicester City Defender’ – and I hasten to add he speaks like the gentleman he is throughout the short film. However, there is even a page labelled ‘Balls to stop’. It seems this website caters only to men. Incidentally, Gerry Taggart tells us he just woke up one day and decided he didn’t want to smoke any more – and he hasn’t. Once he put his mind to it, it was easy, and he didn’t need e-cigarettes.

Leaving aside for the moment the question of why you should need any sort of ‘product’ to stop smoking, let’s look at this stop smoking service’s wording in a little more detail:

We offer all the traditional licensed products (patches, mouth-spray, inhalators, Champix and many more), and advisors are skilled in helping people choose the right product for them.

Presumably the products don’t include e-cigarettes because these are not licensed for smoking cessation.

But they are included – very much so. The service emphasizes that it’s ‘ecig friendly’. That’s rather obvious: almost every page of the website shows pictures of e-cigarettes or contains articles about vaping.

If you want to stop smoking, or as one might say, be smoke-free, this conjures up a picture of giving up smoking and thereafter carrying on with your life without the need to poison yourself all the time by sucking tobacco smoke into your lungs.

But with these sorts of stop-smoking services it must be rather disappointing for potential clients. The message is that in order to return to the normal state of being a non-smoker, they will instead of smoking be encouraged to put relatively pure nicotine into their bodies by other means, and this could go on indefinitely. Or they may be offered a chemical drug to take for weeks or months. Or maybe clients will be offered nicotine products and chemical drugs.

On the other hand, rather than using a product to stop smoking, one could approach it in a different way that might be expressed by paraphrasing Ms Ross: ‘Every time I see someone vaping I think: that’s another person in the thrall of NICOTINE ADDICTION!’

Surely, someone who wants to stop smoking wishes to be free of nicotine in any shape or form. In this case, is so-called nicotine replacement the best that can be offered, or is it second best? Why should anyone have to settle for second best? The fact that smoking substitutes are offered at all merely reinforces the fear that smokers already suffer: the prospect of never smoking again is almost too much to contemplate.

You don’t need any kind of product, let alone a nicotine-containing one, to stop smoking. You just need to understand why you’re in such a pickle in the first place. Or, as shown by Gerry Taggart, you need a different mindset. Then quitting will be easy.

Text © Gabriel Symonds