Around a million people in New Zealand, almost 24% of the population, currently smoke at least once a month. Let’s say a million to make it easier to translate the percentages into numbers.
The Ministry of Health has just released a report into a 2008 survey around stopping smoking, and while I don’t find the content particularly surprising, the sheer numbers involved are startlingly large.
So, of those million smokers, about 600,000 have tried to stop smoking in the past 5 years. About 300,000 of these have deliberately stopped smoking for at least 24 hours in the past 12 months, and on average they have tried this twice in those 12 months. Asian smokers were about twice as likely as others to have tried to stop, for some reason, and European people less likely than average. Around 200,000 people stopped smoking for at least a week in the past 12 months.
Of the 300,000 people who tried to stop smoking in the past 12 months, 225,000 did so for their own health, 111,000 because of the cost of smoking, more than 100,000 because they were sick of smoking, and 80,000 because of someone else’s health. Obviously, some people had more than one reason. Significantly more women than men tried to stop smoking because of someone else’s health, which makes sense, since women often try to stop smoking while pregnant or because of their children. This matches pretty closely to the reasons that my stop-smoking clients give me when I ask.
So, how many actually succeeded? Of the 300,000 people who tried to stop smoking, about 19,600 actually did stop and remained smokefree for the 6-12 months prior to the survey. Of these, other research indicates that around 15,000 will never return to smoking. That’s about a 5% successful quit rate in a year.
Here’s an interesting part to the survey. Current and past smokers were asked about their beliefs and attitudes as well as their behaviours. Based on the results, about 235,000 people in New Zealand are smokers but, if they had their lives over again, they say they would not choose to smoke. And yet, when asked if they agreed with the statement that “Smokers who fail to quit do not really want to quit”, 138,000 agreed and only 120,000 disagreed. They want to stop, they fail to stop, and yet they believe it’s because they don’t really want to. Whatever “really” means.
So what did people do to try to stop smoking? Almost 60,000 used nicotine replacement therapy (NRT). You can get this from the Quitline, from smoking cessation providers like me, from doctors or practice nurses, or over the counter at the supermarket or pharmacy. Through Quitline, smoking cessation providers and doctors, it’s Government-subsidised (it costs $3 to have the prescription filled at a pharmacy); otherwise it costs, I believe, about 10 times that much. About two-thirds of the NRT used was subsidised, indicating that people had had some interaction with a trained provider of some kind, even if only a volunteer on the Quitline. Around 47,000 NZ smokers still believe that NRT is more harmful than smoking cigarettes, though, and about 44,000 believe that it doesn’t improve smokers’ chances of quitting (significantly more women than men believe this). In case you’re wondering, the weight of the evidence is that these people are misinformed.
photo credit: Penningtron
About 36,000 people in their most recent quit attempt used Quitline, more than any other service. Almost 17,000 went to their GP, 14,000 sought help or advice from a friend or family member, over 9,000 from some other healthcare worker apart from their doctor, and 4,500 from a Maori community health worker. (Around 4000 used hypnotherapy, if you look into the spreadsheets that give more detail – more women than men, and almost all in the older agegroups, which fits with my experience, although I have seen some younger women.) About 9,500 used Allen Carr’s book. But about two-thirds of the people who made a recent attempt to stop smoking used no products or advice at all.
Why is this? Well, when asked if they agreed with the statement “People should be able to quit without the help of programmes or products”, a third agreed and half disagreed. Significantly more men than women agreed with the statement, which surprises me not at all. There’s a mismatch between beliefs and behaviour, though. Half of smokers don’t agree that people should be able to stop without help, but two-thirds try to stop without help anyway. That means that at least 10% of smokers are trying to stop without help, even though they say they believe it won’t work.
They’re probably right, too. All the evidence shows that getting help, advice and support does increase the likelihood that smokers will be successful in stopping. Something which the survey fails to tell us (even in the detailed spreadsheets) is which methods were more successful for those who did stop and remain smokefree, but there’s other research on this: NRT about doubles your chances on average, being in a group is also good, and behavioural advice helps too. According to a 2008 study which I’ve blogged about before (Hypnosis for smoking cessation: A randomized trial), hypnotherapy, well-applied, also increases your chances of a successful outcome.
Hundreds of thousands of people in New Zealand alone try to stop smoking every year. Most of them don’t succeed, and this has to be frustrating, quite apart from the continued expense, the continued health risks and the increasing social isolation that smokers experience. That’s why I created my ebook, How to Stop Smoking. It’s a free download (it does lead on to an inexpensive online course with audio tracks). If you’re struggling to stop smoking, give it a read – it offers advice which is likely to be helpful whatever stop-smoking method you are using.
Technorati Tags: smoking, smoking cessation, quitting, New Zealand, statistics
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