The headline certainly attracted my attention: “Smokers aren’t getting help to kick the habit.” That conclusion constituted the gist of a recent report to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), by a select panel of health experts. Their recommendations, urging “that effective interventions reach the people who need them most,” advocated such programs as telephone and in-person counseling, nicotine replacement therapies, tax increases, and anti-smoking laws. The panel concluded that more should be done to help smokers quit.

Unmentioned in the report was a crucial element of reality: that a vibrant industry depends upon an inability of tens of millions of American smokers to rid themselves of the habit. Except for smokers themselves and the persons around them, no one loses when an addict fails to end addiction. There are only winners: tobacco growers, cigarette manufacturers and vendors, advertisers, tax collectors, and those engaged in assisting the victims to kick the habit—which includes officials of NIH as well as members of panels selected to conduct such studies.

Although I claim no credentials as a health expert, I have more than a passing familiarity with the problem. As a former 2-pack-a-day smoker, the habit reinforcements are still vivid in my memory. Most of us who became hooked on the weed started our use at an early age, thanks in part to the effective targeting by the tobacco industry of children in the eleven to fourteen age group. And make no mistake–it was effective. The combination of romantic images, reinforced with seductive Kool billboards, delusions of grandeur perpetuated with visions of an unfiltered John Wayne, and the constant reminder of personal inadequacy assuaged only by a sense of oneness with the Marlboro Man, was what enabled the tobacco companies to declare healthy quarterly stock dividends.

It is hard to say what is required for a smoker to set tobacco aside, as different people respond to different stimuli. The threat of imminent death by cancer is sufficient for some, while others continue to puff through a plastic tube inserted in their trachea after the malignant larynx has been surgically removed. It’s a very personal matter, and as with all addictions–yes, all addictions–until the individual decides to quit, it will not happen. Only when the basic psyche finds itself at cross-purposes with a habit, will the practice end. It is for this reason that treatment efforts for all sorts of substance-abuse are normally ineffective. Whether it be alcohol recovery encouraged and paid for by family members, or court-ordered drug rehabilitation, without the resolve by the addict, it will come to nothing. It has long been my suspicion that the practitioners who operate such facilities are keenly aware of this, and count on repeated failures as the basis for continuing profitability. The last thing that Ms. Helga Hammerlock, owner and operator of the Poughkeepsie Bunghole Alcohol Treatment Center, really wants is that any of her $6,500 per month collection of recyclable sots actually give up the bottle.

A concluding thought:
This gets us to the bottom line. Irrespective of programs created to encourage nicotine addicts to go through the motions, there will be no meaningful action to help American smokers kick the habit. The reason for this is fundamental: It is in no one’s interest to do so.