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DRINK & DRUGS NEWS :: Q&AYou ask the questions - you answer the questions. Please keep your answers coming, and feel free to email a new question. Thanks to this issue's respondents for their contributions. Question:Our organisation currently provides a staff smoking room, but
the new legislation coming into force next year will outlaw this.
While I could just kick the smokers out into the cold I would like
to offer them some help to quit. Has anybody offered any smoking
cessation schemes to their employees, and if so how successful was
it? [Mick, London] Your replies...Dear Mick We had free 'quit smoking sessions' at our place, and agreed to turn the smoking room into a smoke-free zone. It went down OK with most people - until one by one we began to relapse. It will probably be an easier revolution to manage when there's no choice about whether a building is smoke-free or not. One hint to you though: don't replace the fag machine with a chocolate machine… we all put on at least half a stone! Cheryl, Staffordshire
Dear Mick We were offered a free session with a hypnotherapist at my last place of work. The woman in question came with a very good reputation and a string of recommendations as long as your arm. Her programme promised to help you quit in one hour and she claimed an over 90 per cent success rate. Her normal charge of £125 per hour was paid for by the company, with the sessions being held in a meeting room during the working day. The uptake was huge (how many smokers do you know who don't want to quit?) and we duly attended our one-on-one sessions. But I am sad to say that within a week every single person was smoking again. This is not because the hypnotherapist was no good or some kind of fraud, she is still working in our local area and I know is still getting excellent results. It is because giving up has to be a personal decision - the people who decide to give up £125 of their own money and their own time to travel to the clinic for a session are very committed to giving up and demonstrate their desire to do so, so she is able to help them. The people at my work did not have that commitment - they just saw it as an easy, no lose situation. I guess what I am trying to say is that you can't make someone give up, all you can do is make them aware that there is help available. But ultimately, it will be down to them if they decide to take it. Eileen Belling, Surrey
Dear Mick I have a book out on stopping smoking, it's called, Stop Smoking - it's all in your mind and you can beat it, published by Foulsham. I also have a diploma in addiction therapy and work with people who have addictions of all kinds, amongst other things running courses in prisons, and stop smoking training courses for the NHS. So, all in all I have pretty good credentials for offering smoking cessation schemes to groups! Two years ago I spent many hours and quite a sum of money marketing the kind of scheme that you're interested in offering to your workforce. There was a huge amount of interest from management - but no eventual take up. Apparently the workers were simply not interested. Times and legislation have moved on though. Presumably feelings on this subject will have done as well. I would still be very pleased to offer courses to any organisation that wanted to help its employees quit smoking, always assuming that they were up for it. Please email me if you would be interested in talking it over, and the very best of luck in encouraging your workforce to quit. Gillian Bridge, Bath, E-mail gillian.bridge@btinternet.com
Dear Mick I thoroughly applaud your willingness to help your staff break one of the hardest habits there is to break. Smoking is the largest single preventable cause of death in the UK, but one which is still legal and socially acceptable. There are many different ways of giving up the dreaded weed and all of them involve desire on the part of the smoker to quit and a degree of will power. Sadly it is not possible to pay for a 'silver bullet'. The NHS offers free local smoking cessation services and by allowing your staff the time to attend these you will be offering practical assistance. Also why wait till the new legislation? Removing the smoking room now will have the immediate effect of reducing the amount of cigarettes that smokers in your organisation consume. It is too easy to sit and smoke two or three cigarettes on a break, whereas if you have to venture outside and face the elements they may have just the one or even not bother at all. So go on, kick them out into the cold, it's for their own good! Isabelle Rolf, by email
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