Stoptober – Nicotine Monkey

Tag Archives for " Stoptober "

A New Way To Poison Yourself

Do you know what formaldehyde cyanohydrin is? The answer will be revealed shortly, but first, kind reader, consider the following: A BBC news item (20 September 2018) shows TV presenter Jeremy Kyle sitting at his desk, looking rather serious. He boasts he’s quit smoking twenty cigarettes-a-day after thirty-five years: ‘I am proud to say that […]

The attempt and not the deed, Confounds us

The 2017 version of Stoptober, as they call it, finished on 28th October. The idea was that if smokers could be encouraged and supported not to smoke for twenty-eight days, they would be ‘five times more likely to quit for good’. Those who signed up received daily messages of the following kind: If you’re using […]

Inhale Poison to Stop Smoking

Since I’m on their mailing list, I’ve once again started receiving notices of the forthcoming 2017 version of the so-called Stoptober anti-smoking effort put out by Public Health England (part of the UK Department of Health). It’s not my intention to mock this campaign. Smoking is a serious problem and anything that helps people to […]

Chewing the Wall and Climbing the Carpet

In the best tradition of the orthodox approach to smoking cessation, this year’s vintage of the quaintly named Stoptober scheme, produced by NHS England, has just finished. At least it’s an improvement on the previous two versions. Last year’s seemed intended to encourage smokers to quit through humour. Is it a laughing matter? The idea […]

Stopping Smoking is its Own Reward

In my research on smoking I recently came across a book and a website with the following titles: ‘Smoke-free in 30 days’ and ‘STOP SMOKING! in 28 days’, respectively. Here’s a quote from the latter: ‘Getting hooked doesn’t happen overnight and getting unhooked is best done in the same way: over a period of several […]

Smoking Cessation on the NHS

There’s a stop smoking promotion by NHS England called ‘Stoptober’, presumably because this scheme was launched in the month of October. Stoptober is the conventional approach – discouraging. They seem to recognize this fact and try to make a joke of it: Welcome to Day 1 of Stoptober. Now, it’s fair to say that this […]