How To Kick The Butt!

New research and cessation techniques as well as a committed cessation cadre promise to help wean smokers off the habit more permanently, and in the bargain reduce the burden of tobacco-related disease in the country

- Sonali Acharjee

How do you resist it? That wetting of filter, the smell of unlit tobacco awakening your senses, the feeling of warmth washing over your body, soothing the frayed nerve and dissipating all accumulated tightness. Cigarettes can be a constant companion, your friend through pleasure and pain, a coping mechanism when you are feeling stressed or angry. For Prerna Barde, a 29-year-old marketing executive from Mumbai, “A cigarette is like my second skin. My happiness is linked to it. I find it difficult to do anything without one.”

Trouble is, the more nicotine lures you in, the more difficult it becomes to shake it off or escape the havoc it will wreak on your lung or mouth. It is something people know. Every so often, they try to break off the relationship too. But very few manage to make the break permanent. India, in fact, has one of the lowest rates of smoking cessation in the world. According to the World Health Organization’s 2019 Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS), 55 per cent of smokers in India want to quit, but have been unable to do so. Only about 4 per cent actually succeed, according to the WHO.

New research now offers hope to those who want to quit smoking but have failed. For decades, the most common answer to tobacco cessation was to put a hard stop or opt for nicotine-replacement therapy (NRT) in the form of gums, patches or sprays. If it led to emotional and physical withdrawal effects, there was medicine for that too. Today, the entire approach to cessation has changed. An October 2021 study on tobacco cessation by the University of Bristol published in the American journal