Qualifying question: Does this person’s partner or best friend smoke also?

Your answer: Yes!

Answer:

Try to get the partner or friend to stop smoking first.

Explanation:

Quitting smoking is highly contagious and is spread through close personal contact!

Smokers are more likely to quit if a person close to them has already quit.

And this “social contagion” effect is likely to get even more powerful as the number of smokers continues to fall.

This contagious aspect of quitting smoking was shown in a 2008 study of the Framingham sample, a group of 12000-odd people who have been closely studied since the early 1970s:

• If a spouse stopped smoking, a person was 67% less likely to be smoking.
• If a sibling stopped smoking, a person was 25% less likely to be smoking.
• If a friend stopped smoking, a person was 36% less likely to be smoking
  (and 55% less likely if the friend had some college education)
• If a person worked in a small organsiation and a coworker stopped smoking,
  he or she was 34% less likely to be smoking.

The message of this study is clear:

Smokers are strongly influenced to quit if people close to them have already quit.

Here is a good summary of the study results:

Smoking Is Addictive, But Quitting Is Contagious

ScienceDaily (2008-05-22) — A study of 12,067 people over a period of 32 years has found that people quit smoking in droves. Through reconstructing the social network of the 12,067 individuals, researchers discovered that smoking cessation occurs in network clusters. Those who continue to smoke are increasingly pushed to the periphery of social networks. … > read full article

To read the full report published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine,

click on http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/358/21/2249

How can you apply this information?

• Approach the close smoking associates of the person you want to quit smoking. Give them a copy of the study results. Explain that if they led the way by quitting first, they will not only be helping themselves but they might also be helping their smoking friends to quit as well.

Example of the idea in action:

A savvy doctor acquaintance of mine is aware how important it is for the smoking partners of his smoking patients to quit – and how sometimes they need to be the ones to quit first. He explained that one of his patients needed stop smoking for health reasons so

“in my manipulative way I focused on his wife and getting her to stop. She is the strong one and is much more likely to succeed.”

And as smokers become increasingly the “odd people out” , they will be even more influenced to follow the example of others who have quit.