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Quitting smoking

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Prevention and awareness campaigns, smoking bans in certain public places and taxation of tobacco products are just some of the measures that have been encouraging Canadians to butt out.

These recent initiatives seem to have helped bring the country closer to its objective of reducing smoking to 20% by 2011. In the mid-1960s, close to half of Canadian adults smoked cigarettes; by 2003, this proportion was 23%. The proportion of children and teenagers who smoke was lower than that of the entire population. Another encouraging sign is that the daily consumption of tobacco dropped from 20.6 cigarettes per person in 1985 to 16.4 in 2002.

Because tobacco is addictive, it can be a difficult habit to break. However, the chances of success increase with each year of abstinence. According to longitudinal data from the National Population Health Survey, from 1994/1995 to 2002/2003, approximately 20% of adult daily smokers 18 years and older who had quit in the past two years resumed smoking within the next two years. The risk of a relapse dropped considerably with time, falling to 1% after five years or more of abstinence.

The growing number of constraints on smoking in public places and in private households may be conducive to a behavioural change. Male daily smokers who lived in smoke-free homes and were also employed in workplaces where smoking was banned averaged eight fewer cigarettes a day than did those who could smoke at home and at work. For women, the difference was 6.5 cigarettes a day.

Quitting smoking reduces the risks associated with certain serious health conditions, such as cancer and respiratory and cardiac diseases. Regardless of a person's age, quitting smoking increases life expectancy. For example, a smoker who quit 10 to 15 years earlier has roughly the same risk of dying as a person who never smoked.