Using tobacco is like playing Russian roulette. When you have three bullets in a six-shot revolver, you have a 50 percent chance of being killed. Despite such appalling odds, approximately 24.3 million men and 22.2 million women in the U.S. still smoke -and 440,000 of them die every year from the effects of their habit. That’s one death every 72 seconds, and one every 67 seconds if including the estimated 35,000 who will be killed each year by the effects of secondhand smoke. And yet, another three million Americans, most of them under 18 will become addicted to nicotine this year, which are more than enough to replace the smokers who will die from tobacco use. Half of these new smokers will eventually die of smoking’s profound health effects, as well -unless they quit.

This In Focus pamphlet informs the reader of the benefits of quitting tobacco through a detailed time-line. It also meticulously discusses the difficulties of quitting tobacco and how to combat those difficulties, as well as how medication can improve a user’s quitting success rate. From this pamphlet the tobacco user will be enriched with the knowledge and confidence they need to quit and restrain from tobacco use.