More light relief...

This video is called Smoking Kills...it's funny though.

No hamsters were harmed in this production.

My first cigarette...

I remember it so clearly. I was nine. I had just finished my soccer practice and was hanging around the deserted school waiting for my older brother to finish his.

An older, cooler boy, Michael Weeks, was waiting for his brother too. He saw me kicking a ball against the wall and called me over to him. As we sat and chatted, he offered me a cigarette and I took it. It was the worst mistake I ever made and one that would largely define the next 25 years of my life.

I wish, at that moment, I could have stopped the tape and seen into the future: the pain, suffering and despair this drug would cause; the wasted time and money; the damage to the relationships with my family and the years of mental and physical slavery. I would have said NO and kicked Mike in the teeth.

But I didn't. I took that first cigarette. Before long, I was smoking every day and by the time I left High School I was smoking nearly a pack-a-day, despite never genuinely 'enjoying' it.

In all, I smoked for just over 25 years. I was a good sportsman at school, but I quit playing the sports I loved because as a smoker I couldn't handle the physical demands of training. It's one of my biggest regrets. I know I can never get those years back, but what I can do is to try to ensure that other young kids don't make the same mistake I did, which is why I share Allen's passion for prevention.

If you want to help your children to avoid the smoking trap, then read Allen's book "Smoking Sucks!"

Dave Allen talks about smoking and quitting

The late, great Irish comedian Dave Allen did this terrific routine about smoking and quitting back in 1984 - the year after Allen Carr founded the Easyway organisation. If you have a few minutes, enjoy one of the all-time greats...

An interesting thought...

Yesterday when I was running a quit smoking seminar, one of the attendees - a rather elderly Greek gentleman - made what I thought was a very interesting point. He said: "If we had to pay for our bodies, in the same way that we have to pay for a car or a house, would we never even think about ruining it by smoking."

He's right: we take so much - including our body and our health - for granted.

Allen Carr once said: "Your body is the vehicle that carries you through life. You only get one, and you've been lucky to have a strong, healthy body. It is a thousand times over your most precious possession. Who could conceive of a more ridiculous behaviour than to spend a fortune for the privilege of administering hourly doses of poison to the vehicle upon which the length, quality and enjoyment of your whole life depends?"

Take control of your life back. Quit smoking today using our online web seminar. To find our more visit us at www.TheEasywayToStopSmoking.com

Quit smoking before Thanksgiving weekend

Every year we see a big spike in our seminar bookings immediately before Thanksgiving. I guess people want to go back to their families as happy non-smokers, rather than having to suffer through Thanksgiving weekend as a smoker, constantly on the look-out for any excuse to be away from their family so they can sneak out for a quick cigarette.

We are running two seminars in the US before Thanksgiving: one in NYC on November 15th (more information here) and one in LA on November 21st (information here).

If either of these dates or locations is not convenient, then you could think about quitting online with our webcast seminar. The online seminar is available 24/7/365 and you can watch it whenever you want, wherever you want. For more information click here.

More light relief...

This won't help you quit, but it is pretty funny...

A bit of light relief...

Most quit smoking commercials are ineffective because they talk about the health risks of smoking and smokers immediately tune it out.

This is a different, more light-hearted approach...enjoy!

Ayn Rand Centre: Smoking and personal freedom

Today the Ayn Rand Centre for Individual Rights released an article describing the tobacco control community as "a cancer on American liberty". It's ironic really, calling the American Cancer Society a 'cancer'.

The article claims that smoking by-laws, taxes on cigarettes, tobacco advertising bans and lawsuits against Big Tobacco unnecessarily inconvenience smokers and tobacco companies. Smokers should be left to make their own decisions, free of interference, it argues.

So, let's get this right: the Ayn Rand Centre supports smoking everywhere without restriction, no taxes on tobacco, allowing drug dealers to advertise their product without restriction and that tobacco companies ought to be allowed to lie to protect their business and be immune from prosecution for doing so. It sounds like the 1950s and the effect of these policy reversals would be to dramatically increase smoking rates to levels seen back then, undoing 50 years of public health education and initiating a dramatic explosion of the current health crisis at untold financial and human expense.

Actually, I'm a big fan of individual freedom and responsibility myself. But can a child be expected to demonstrate the same degree of maturity and responsibility as an adult? Of course not: just watch an episode of 90210.

The problem here is that over 90% of smokers get hooked in childhood - years before they are able to exert adult thinking and maturity. Tobacco companies know this very well and have been shown to market to teens on a routine basis. This makes sense: when you kill 5,000,000 of your customers every year, you need fresh meat. It is almost impossible to get adults to start smoking, so tobacco companies use cartoon characters, cellphone-shaped packaging and candy-like flavours to promote tobacco to kids.

Is the Ayn Rand Centre really suggesting that this is OK? When you end up supporting drug dealers promoting to children because of 'personal freedom', surely you know something isn't right? Someone needs to point out to them that real adults take real responsibility, including responsibility for their families and their fellow citizens - it's what humans do in civil society. With respect to tobacco, this means protecting easily-misled children from rapacious, amoral tobacco companies looking to make a buck.

We see tens of thousands of smokers every year in our seminars. Over 90% of them started smoking as children and not one of them ever thought they would end up smoking for as long as they have. Kids fall into the nicotine trap very quickly, but it can take them a lifetime to escape.

This is the problem when an idea (personal freedom) becomes a dogma, to be slavishly followed, irrespective of the consequences. Yes, of course personal freedom is important, but it should not trump everybody else's personal freedom. Surely the right to clean air for everyone trumps an individual's right to smoke? Let's not make our children pay the price of Ms. Rand's intellectual masturbation.

It is tobacco companies, not the tobacco control movement who are cancer on American freedom. Every year they steal life from the 450,000 Americans who die from smoking, and liberty from the 8m Americans living with a smoking -related disease or condition.

Yet another happy non-smoker...

As I mentioned in my blog last week, Oct 15th was Colleen Rusholme's first anniversary of quitting. Colleen is part of Toronto's EZ-Rock breakfast team, Humble, Kim, Colleen and Rick.

She sent this lovely email through...

"I carry the words " shame" " hopelessness" and " fear" on a little piece of paper in my wallet. I pull it out sometimes as a reminder of who I used to be and how I felt about myself as a smoker. If I could go back and tell that girl that she could be a happy, non deprived non-smoker, I would. I'm free and forever grateful for this method of quitting. I only planned on quitting ONCE. And that's what I did. THANK-YOU!"

We hope that the large number of smokers who want to quit, but are too scared to try, will be inspired by your story. Thank you Colleen for sharing it...

To quit smoking in Toronto - or anywhere across North America, please visit us at www.theeasywaytostopsmoking.com

Smoking in movies

Watch this excellent and fascinating video from Stanton Glantz's team at Smoke Free Movies.

It's called 120,000 Lives a Year and it's the story of how Big Tobacco uses Hollywood to recruit young smokers.

Colleen Rusholme's first anniversary

Congratulations to EZ-Rock's Colleen Rusholme who today celebrates her first anniversary of quitting smoking.

I met Colleen through her colleague, "Humble" Howard Glassman, who quit smoking with us five years ago next month. On air he publicly challenged Colleen - a pretty hardcore smoker - to quit smoking and Colleen, never one to shirk a challenge, accepted. I felt this was a very brave move on Colleen's part, particularly as she was experiencing many of the fears that most smokers have whenever they think about quitting ("The cigarette has always been there for me. I'll be losing my best friend!"), let alone the additional pressure of doing it in front of hundreds of thousands of listeners.

She needn't have worried though. She did brilliantly in the session we had, walked out a happy non-smoker had has stayed one ever since.

This morning, I was a guest on the Humble, Kim, Colleen and Rick breakfast show to celebrate Colleen's anniversary. Howard asked me a question I have never had before in all my years of media appearances: "Why is it so easy to quit?" What a great question! The truth is that when you have the right information, quitting can be very easy.

Allen Carr's Easyway to Stop Smoking webcasts, seminars and books provide all smokers with the information they need to quit easily and enjoyably. To find out more, visit us at www.TheEasywayToStopSmoking.com

Uh-oh: more tobacco company ethics issues

Today, the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) published a devastating article about the destruction of key documents by British American Tobacco's (BAT) Canadian subsidiary, Imperial Tobacco Canada (ITC).

In it the authors claim that BAT instructed ITC to destroy key documents that could expose the company to liability or embarrassment. ITC, rather stupidly in my view, wrote to BAT listing sixty of these documents, confirming their destruction. Using this list, these sixty documents were subsequently found in BAT's own document archives.

The documents included evidence from internal scientific reviews, as well as 47 original research studies, 35 of which examined the cancer-causing effects of smoking. The documents also describe BAT research on light and mild cigarettes, including the ways in which consumers adapted their smoking behaviour in order to get the same levels of nicotine as if they were smoking full-strength cigarettes. The documents also depict a comprehensive research program on the pharmacology of nicotine and its addictiveness, showing the central role of nicotine in smoking behaviour.

We should bear in mind that in 1992, when these documents were destroyed, tobacco companies were still denying that nicotine was addictive and that smoking caused cancer.

As we say in our seminars: Sometimes you need to ask yourself who your friends are.

See no evil...

Today, a rather self-serving Philip Morris (PM) research report looking at the effectiveness of in-store tobacco display bans was published on the PM-owned website, productdisplayban.com. In it, they conclude that the display ban in Iceland has not had any impact on the number of smokers or the amount they smoke. As a result, they say, the ban should be lifted.

But if such display bans have no effect on cigarette sales, then why does PM continue to fight their introduction with such energy and enthusiasm? And if such bans have no impact, then what's the problem with leaving them in place? Just a thought...

Winter is on the way...

As the leaves begin to turn here in the NorthEast, the smoker's heart begins to sink as they brace themselves for six months of freezing to death in order to do a drug that doesn't even get them high.

Last winter I flew into Saskatoon to run some sessions and saw something interesting at the airport. As you are probably aware, it gets pretty cold in Saskatoon. This February evening it was -28 degrees Centigrade. Like most people, my big jacket was in my main baggage, so I was waiting for my suitcase at the carousel. Another passenger - clearly a smoker - was doing the same, and getting increasingly agitated as the wait for our luggage continued. In the end he said: "Screw it, I'm outta here." and walked outside in just a T-shirt, to smoke a cigarette.

The terminal at Saskatoon Airport is totally glass-fronted, so the rest of us still at the baggage carousel could see him outside, in -28, trying to light his cigarette. He was shivering so much that he couldn't even light it, and this frustrated him even more. Within a minute or so, he couldn't even feel his hands, but he refused to give up. Eventually, a bundled-up airport employee went outside to ask if he was OK. "I'm fine" he said "I'm just getting a bit of fresh air."

Avoid the indignity of standing outside freezing your nuts off, pretending that you need fresh air when what you really need is to smoke. Quit smoking today with Allen carr's unique Easyway method by visiting us at www.TheEasywayToStopSmoking.com

The cost of smoking...

When I was a heavy smoker with a young family, the price of cigarettes put a big strain on our finances.

But smokers would rather go without food than go without smokes. In a rather pathetic attempt to justify my smoking, I once worked out how much it cost per drag and it seemed like quite good value at the time. But of course I was only really conning myself.

The first cigarette you ever smoked cost you everything you have ever spent on smoking. Because if you hadn't smoked that first cigarette, you wouldn't have smoked the second, and the third...you wouldn't have bought your first pack, then your first carton....

That was one very expensive cigarette!

So how much does smoking really cost? Let's say that you are a pack-a-day smoker living somewhere in or around New York, where the average cost of a pack is $10.

Ten dollars a day comes to $70 per week, $300 per month or $3,650 a year, after tax. To net $3,650, you need to earn around $5,000 a year.

So, let's say that you start smoking comparitively late in life at 20, and that smoking kills you at 70. That's 50 years of smoking at $5,000 per year: a total of $250,000. To put this in context as of 2009, the average price of a house in the US is $257,000.

We are not suggesting that smokers quit because of the money, but what we are saying is that being a smoker is a massive financial commitment.

And of course, so far we have only talked about the financial cost of cigarettes. What about the higher health insurance rates smokers are charged? Or the reduced value of a car or home that has been used by smokers? Or the opportunity cost of investing $250,000 instead of it going up in smoke? One MSNBC report calculated that if a 40 year-old smoker quits and invests that money into their 401(k), it could be worth $400,000 by the time they retire.

And so far, we have only looked at the financial cost of smoking. What about the cost to your health, your self-respect and your freedom. And what about the people who love you? What cost are they paying for you to smoke?

The cost of smoking is more than the price of smokes.

To quit smoking easily and enjoyably use Allen Carr's unique, drug-free Easyway method. To find out more visit us at www.TheEasywayToStopSmoking.com

More tobacco company hypocrisy?

Philip Morris is fighting the cigarette retail display ban in Ireland, claiming it is anti-competitive. Interestingly, they are not fighting an identical ban in Canada. Why not?

Could it be that, as always, it's about money? The ban suits them in Canada, where they have a strong market position, but not in Ireland, where they lag behind Gallagher.

So PM's position is not about freedom of expression after all; it's about freezing market share in markets where they do well, and trying to grow it in markets where they don't.

Reasons to quit smoking I

Non-smokers have more and better sex. http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/1-17-2006-86579.asp

Need I say more?

Another happy non-smoker

We received this email today, from R. Glassman in Toronto:

"4-and-a-half years as a happy non smoker with absolutely no possible reason to ever consider touching a cigarette again. It's that simple and easy. Once I understood that there were no possible benefits to smoking, it wasn't hard for me to never want to smoke. The seminar really worked for me!"

Thank you for taking the trouble to get in touch and very many congratulations on this wonderful achievement.

To learn more about how you can quit smoking using this simple, drug-free approach, visit us at www.TheEasywayToStopSmoking.com

When you lit that first cigarette....

When you lit that first cigarette were you really deciding that you'd be a smoker for the rest of your life? Did you think that you'd still be smoking all these years later? If you had known that first cigarette would put you in this situation, would you have smoked it?

The vast majority of smokers have their first cigarettes as children. Under pressure from peers, they want to be one of the cool kids. The first few cigarettes are absolutely disgusting and this is what springs the trap: the young smoker just cannot accept that they could get addicted to something so disgusting that doesn't even get them high. It's this lack of a high that springs the trap. If the cigarette got us high like crack or crystal meth, we would be far more wary. The lack of a high prevents the young smoker from seeing smoking for the drug addiction it is, and so we continue to smoke, secure in the knowledge that we could not get into trouble with a drug that doesn't even get us high. The first time most people realize they have a problem is the first time they try to quit and realize they can't.

Allen Carr's Easyway to Stop Smoking has helped millions of smokers to escape from the smoking trap easily and permanently. To find out more visit us at www.TheEasywayToStopSmoking.com