- Over three in five smokers have tried and failed to quit up to ten times
- One person dies every six seconds due to smoking (world health organisation)
- However only one third (34%) of smokers cited health as their top reason for kicking the habit
Habits are hard to break, or so the saying goes… Whether it’s biting our nails, incessantly chewing gum or smoking cigarettes, many people would testify that – no matter how hard they try – some of these ‘bad’ habits are seemingly impossible to break.
A new study released by Vapourlites reveal the difficulty Brits face when attempting to give up smoking completely, with more than six in ten (65%) failing to quit up to ten times.
Millions of lives are lost each year from smoking (World Health Organisation) so you would expect health to be the chief reason given for stopping smoking. In fact health was the reason for wanting to quit given by only one-third (35%) of smokers, with concerns about smelling bad and their appearance, cost, peer pressure and having to smoke outside being other reasons cited.
BUDDING QUITTERS
Importantly, additional research by the Royal College of Physicians estimates that if all the smokers in Britain stopped smoking cigarettes and took up e-cigarettes instead – it could potentially save 5 million lives. (Professor John Britton)
An electronic cigarette delivers nicotine to take away a smoker’s cravings. But it doesn’t deliver the 4,000 chemicals you get when you smoke a normal cigarette. As well as tar, those chemicals include poisonous arsenic, benzene, cadmium, carbon monoxide and cyanide.
Other key findings include:
- Of the 18% of smokers who have already tried e-cigarettes, almost two-thirds are still using the devices on a regular basis.
- Mortality amongst smokers is three times higher than non-smokers.
- If you stop before you’re 35 it’s likely you’ll live just as long as a non-smoker. (British Heart Foundation)
- And even if you’re in your 70s, give up smoking today and you’ll still have a greater life expectancy. (British Heart Foundation)
British Doctor and Television Presenter Dr Christian Jessen was on the radio discussing the dangers of smoking and explaining the misconceptions surrounding nicotine: “We’ve got it very wrong about nicotine. The reason people smoke is for the nicotine, it’s a nice drug, it calms, it soothes, in many respects it makes you more alert as well. We have nicotine receptors in the brain so we are almost designed for nicotine!
“Nicotine is not dangerous at all; you can maintain your nicotine addiction for your entire life and have no significant shortening of your life or detrimental effect on your health and that is the single biggest misunderstanding when it comes to smoking. Nicotine is not the thing that causes all the long term health problems that we see in smokers – it is smoking itself.
“So what we can do actually is very simply replace smoking with another form of nicotine delivery and probably the one that is most similar to smoking is vaping using e-cigarettes”.
