Best Ways to Quit Smoking

This expression, or variants of it, is to be found widely on the internet. But the very expression ‘best ways to quit smoking’ is odd.

There’s only one way to quit smoking: just do it! Why should you need a way, method, technique, or ‘tool’ to help you stop doing something? (It’s true that my approach is called the Symonds Method of quitting smoking, but this is just for convenience in the use of words.)

Yet so many ‘ways’ to stop poisoning yourself with tobacco smoke are being promoted as the best, or one of the best.

I take a satirical look as some of these, including stop-smoking clinics, laser therapy, a coconut oil scam, an  ingredient-free wonder called Harmless Cigarette, and last and very much least, e-cigarettes. To encourage e-cigarette use as a means of stopping smoking – as the UK ‘tobacco control’ movement enthusiastically does – is misleading and irresponsible.

Simple Smoking Cessation

If you’re a pack-a-day smoker, how many lungfuls of poisonous tobacco fumes will you inhale in a day, a month, or a year? Assuming one cigarette is consumed in ten puffs, the numbers are 200, 6,000, and 73,000, respectively. This dreadful situation raises the question: what can be done to help smokers cease and desist from such abnormal [...]

2024-09-11T08:06:08+00:0022 October 2022|Categories: Best Ways to Quit Smoking, Louise Ross, Quit Smoking, Smoking and vaping|
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WHO’s Ambition for Smokers to ‘Commit to Quit’

The WHO, bless their cotton socks, in December 2020 launched a ‘year-long global campaign for World No Tobacco Day 2021 – “Commit to Quit” ’ and as part of this splendid effort we are informed that ‘The campaign will support at least 100 million people as they try to give up tobacco…’. Come now, Dr Symonds, surely not [...]

2022-12-05T08:28:12+00:007 March 2021|Categories: Best Ways to Quit Smoking, How to Quit Smoking, WHO|
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Is Allen Carr’s ‘Easyway to Stop Smoking’ Really Easy?

In a previous blog about Allen Carr I critiqued his Easyway To Stop Smoking book and looked at the claimed success rate of his stop-smoking seminars. Today I’ll tell you more about these seminars. Some time ago I had the opportunity of observing an Allen Carr 'Easyway To Stop Smoking’ group session in London. There were, as I [...]

2023-06-17T08:36:43+00:009 August 2018|Categories: Allen Carr, Best Ways to Quit Smoking, The Symonds Method|
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Smoking in Scotland

The headline to an article in the online The Scotsman (4 April 2018) laments that ‘Smoke-free Scotland goal stalls as one in five fail [sic] to quit’. This is blamed on funding for smoking cessation campaigns being cut by the Scottish Government. The article elaborates: About one in five Scots, equivalent to 850,000 adults, are [sic] still lighting [...]

2022-09-07T13:24:22+00:006 July 2018|Categories: Best Ways to Quit Smoking, Nicotine Addiction, Quit Smoking Services|
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Smoking Health Effects

Here are some facts about a natural disaster, tuberculosis. According to WHO, in 2016: 10.4 million people fell ill with TB, and 1.7 million died from the disease. And now here are some facts about an unnatural disaster, smoking. Tobacco kills more than 7 million people each year. More than 6 million of those deaths are the result [...]

2023-03-10T00:24:10+00:002 June 2018|Categories: Best Ways to Quit Smoking, Nicotine Addiction, Smoking Health Effects|
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The Symonds Method Compared

The table below shows the main features of the Symonds Method compared with conventional quit-smoking methods. The ‘chalk and cheese’ analogy puts it clearly, even if I say so myself. This is because I know from my experience of treating hundreds of smokers that quitting smoking is easy. On the other hand, whether because of vested interests or [...]

2018-08-11T14:10:35+00:0012 August 2017|Categories: Best Ways to Quit Smoking, The Symonds Method|
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Does the Symonds Method Work?

All right, Dr Symonds, what's the evidence that your method works? This hypothetical question, on the face of it, is not unreasonable. The question is about whether there have been any scientific trials to compare my method with other ways to quit smoking. A trial could be done like this: you find two hundred smokers who say they [...]

2022-04-14T01:16:56+00:002 December 2016|Categories: Best Ways to Quit Smoking, Nicotine Replacement Therapy, The Symonds Method|
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How to Keep Smoking

On opening the cover of the august organ Tobacco Control of November 2015, I was confronted with what at first glance looked like an ad for a packet of washing powder. Closer inspection, however, revealed it’s an illiterate puff for 'extra strength gum for enhanced craving relief'. In other words, it’s for chewing gum containing 6mg of the poison nicotine [...]

2022-02-09T05:07:48+00:0022 December 2015|Categories: Best Ways to Quit Smoking, Nicotine gum, Smoking Withdrawal Symptoms|
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How Not to Stop Smoking

If you're a smoker trying, that is, failing, to stop, what help is out there? The orthodox approach, promulgated by the medical profession, is called, curiously, nicotine replacement therapy. Does this mean nicotine is a replacement for something or is the nicotine going to be replaced with something? What is meant, of course, is cigarette replacement: cigarettes are [...]

2023-01-06T01:13:02+00:006 October 2014|Categories: Best Ways to Quit Smoking, Nicotine gum, Nicotine Patches|
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