30 July 2019
By Dr Roger Henderson
We talk quitting cigarettes with Dr Roger Henderson, a senior GP who was previously the head of a general practice in Shropshire. He also chairs and speaks at many health conferences both in the UK and abroad and is a specialist in smoking cessation and tobacco control
If you were to ask the average smoker who James Albert Bonsack was, I would lay a bet that they would look at you blankly and have no idea. To be fair to them, most people would be clueless even though his invention has helped contribute to a smoker dying every six seconds in the world.
Dying for a Fag - Why Do People Still Smoke?
In 1881 he was granted an American patent for a machine that not only chopped tobacco into fine pieces but also then put it into a long tube of paper which was rolled and sliced into individual cigarettes. This machine could produce a cigarette at least twelve times faster than a human could roll one, and so lit the fuse of the modern tobacco industry.
One Billion Smokers Globally
Fast forward to 2019 and there are an estimated one billion smokers globally, smoking just under six trillion cigarettes each year. When questioned, many of these want to quit but it is not always clear whether they mean they want to stop smoking tomorrow or simply have a vague desire to quit some time in the future.
This means that in theory at least healthcare professionals are pushing at an open door in assisting smokers to quit tobacco, especially as there has never been more effective pharmacotherapy to aid this than there is currently.
Watch below - Meet Sapphire, who sets off on a journey to understand how deeply connected smoking is to cognitive triggers, starting with her own.
Have to quit help me please
Thank god I've quit smoking 😊
