Smoke-free home for quitting

People who successfully quit smoking are much more likely to have a “no smoking” policy in their homes, researchers find.

Drs. Chung-won Lee and Jennifer Kahende of the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention looked at multiple factors associated with successful smoking cessation using data from the 2000 US National Health Interview Survey.

The study included 772 successful quitters, defined as smokers who quit for 7 to 24 months and had not relapsed, and 3 218 current smokers who tried to quit in the past 12 months but failed.

Lee and Kahende report in the latest issue of the American Journal of Public Health that the successful quitters were much more likely than the unsuccessful quitters to have a rule against smoking in their home.

10 times as likely
"People who had a smoke-free home were 10 times as likely to be successful quitters as those who lived in a home where smoking took place," they report.

Successful quitters were also less likely to have switched to "light" cigarettes for health reasons, more likely to be 35 years of age or older, married or living with a partner, and to have a college degree.

These findings, the researchers say, point to the need for a "holistic" approach to smoking cessation - one that includes smokers' family members, friends and colleagues in implementing smoke-free policies that support cessation."

The findings also confirm that workplace no-smoking policies do help those who intend to quit succeed. Having a no-smoking policy at work doubled the likelihood of successful cessation, Lee and Kahende found.

SOURCE: American Journal of Public Health, August 2007. – (ReutersHealth) Read more:
Stop smoking Centre

June 2007