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THERE’S NOW MORE people who’ve quit smoking than smokers in the country, according to new research from the HSE.
The HSE’s latest Quit campaign has seen the publication of a new survey which shows that there are now over 1 million people in the country who’ve successfully quit smoking.
The Healthy Ireland Survey found that about 22% of Irish adults are smokers, 18% smoke on a daily basis with 4% smoking occasionally.
This translates to about 830,000 smokers in Ireland, fewer than the number of quitters.
Of those who do smoke, the rate of smoking is highest in the 25-34 age group and is lowest (9%) in the over 75 age group.
Men are more likely to smoke than women with 25% of men being current smokers, compared to 20% of women.
The survey also looked at people who’ve quit smoking in the past year and found that about one in eight people (12%) who smoked a year ago have since quit.
Almost half of those who successfully quit smoking recently did so through willpower alone (45%) while 37% used e-cigarettes.
As part of its quit campaign, the HSE is pointing out that latest figures show that about one in five deaths in Ireland is connected to smoking.
Almost half of these deaths related to cancer while the other half were connected to either cardiovascular or respiratory conditions.
Help on how to quite can be found on the HSE’s Quit website or by calling the Quit Team on Freephone 1800 201 203
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3rd of January and I’m still not smoking. One day at a time
@paul: keep it up it gets easier.
@paul: same here Paul, third day, taking it easy. Best of luck!
@paul: do yourself a favour and stay out of the pub for a while, .thats the hardest part.
That’s great news.im off them 5 years myself.best decision i ever made.they drained me and my pockets
@dick dastardly: Same here, both me and my wife gave them up 5 years ago best thing we could have done.
@Lee Jones: Myself and wife are on the Vape my sister her husband another sister and boyfriend . the vape is whats killing the tobacco industry.
Gave up a few months back and found it rather easy.
Here’s what I did, I started with a vape and slowly lowered the nicotine from 6mg to 3mg and then for habbit 0mg and I soon found that i didn’t want to use the vape at all, I don’t ever crave cigs anymore.
Hope my method helps someone
@Derm Farrell: that’s really good advice and helpful.
@Derm Farrell: Did you vape rolling tobacco?. I tried vaping amber leaf and it tasted disgusting.
Not hard to quit the hard bit is staying off them. 5 years since l last smoked still get the occasional urge for 1. Best of luck to those quitting its worth it!!
@Kerry Blake: This is why I always have nicotine chewing gum available. Have been off the fags for a year now, but still get the urge to have one when I get stressed. So I have a nicotine gum instead.
I am into my 7th year off them I went cold turkey and used an app called Since I Quit to keep track and I haven’t spent €28k in that time on.
Good luck to anyone trying you can do it.
How do they come up with these polls. Anybody here polled? This is always a push this time of yr to sell their overpriced patches gum and other cr ap. If they really care about helping people off cigarettes why not give them to people who want help free of charge, which in turn frees up hospital lists of smokers getting treatment no? Everyone a winner
@Anthony Whelan: a couple of years ago I signed to quit.ie…. They sent me a notepad, a pencil and a brochure on the post to help me quit and of course the daily text to “encourage” me to stay away from the cigs. Including a pencil in the quit smoking kit was incredibly helpful
Fair play, addiction is a b(tch.
We need to treat people addicted to heroin and other drugs, with as much compassion as we treat cigarette smokers.
@Franklin Roosevelt: So tax the sh ite out of the drugs? :)
@Fred Croydon: if we were to start a discussion about drug use we will have to look into it as drug addiction is a health problem, not a criminal problem. Therefore once you treat it from the roots ie health problem, the criminal side of it is diminished
Interesting point. The fact that people over 75 have the lowest smoking rates is not an indication that people born before 1945 don’t tend to smoke, but rather many of those that did smoke have already died, leaving the survey sample biased.
@Fergus Kavanagh: it’s hard to be sure about this when the journalist neither provides numbers nor percentages. If the number of smokers per age group was calculated as a percentage of the group size the results will not be skewed based on one age group being smaller or larger than the others
@Karen Arabella O’Hanlon Cohrt: It’s more complex than that. It’s not so much the size of the group but the percentage in each group who have died from smoking-related causes or who have been forced to quit to avoid such a death. Among 25-34 year olds that percentage will be close to zero while among the over-75s will be extremely high. Those who still smoke in their 70s are an ever-shrinking minority while there would be many who smoked when young but gave up decades ago. A full understanding would require comparison to similar surveys from previous decades.
@Derek Walsh: you’re absolutely right. I was thinking about the prevalence of smoking across the different age groups independently of any other factors.
5 years today. Best decision I’ve ever made.
Good to see. Smokers are the most irritating people on the planet.
@Peter Denham: you haven’t come across too many crossfitters so then
@Fear Uisce: Or Vegans
Dont get me started on those smoking, crossfitting, vegans. They’re the worst of all.
One in five smoke and one in five die from smoking.
I’m still trying to work that out.
5 years without cigarette and alcohol
Good luck to everyone quitting . Well done … To show it can be done I quit on 17th July 1991 .. over 26 years ago .. one of the best things I ever did .. I cold turkeyed it ..no patches gums or vapes then .. they seem to be another industry altogether now …I know they do help people but if you can go through the hard withdrawal .. feel the pain .. you won’t want to go back .. again it’s not easy so if there is an easier way go for it.. bottom line is you want to be off everything to be CLEAN .. 6 weeks and your body is fully withdrawn .. but it takes a lot longer for the mind to be withdrawn .. that’s the key to long term withdrawal..WELL DONE AGAIN AND BEST OF LUCK TO ALL OF YOU ..
@Noel Kelleher: j. Non. N. Now. Nonn nnn. Nn
The only non damaging element in smoking is nicotine but nicotine is the very strongly addictive element.
Nicotine gum or sprays or even vapes addresse the cravings but there are occasions of temptation:-
1. Stress and worry.
2. Alcohol lowering the will power. Also alcohol is often associating with smoking and each potentiates the craving for the other. A dink and a cig are massively addicted in combination.
3. Will power is hugely undermined by tiredness and by low blood sugar.
4. Associative smoking, that is the company of fellow smokers.
Just try to give up the cigs for one day at a time. Short term misery for long term gain.
Reward yourself with treats the longer that you can stay off.
And remember. As a smoker you are being intentionally, ruthlessly and unscrupulously being exploited by the tobacco industry which has the legal profession in its pocket.
Giving up smoking is easy if you are doing it for the right reasons.
and i was doing so well
Not suprised, as the genuine ciggys are the most expensive in the EU, Good luck to all the quitters
Quit 6 years ago but now I’m addicted to nicorette gum. Can’t break the stupid habit.
@Eliza Mac: Sorry to hear that, the gum/chews/patches habit is also a very expensive one. I’ve no idea why these things are so dear because nicotine isn’t.
After smoking about 40 a day for the best part of 40 years I was completely addicted to nicotine. Almost three years ago a very mild COPD condition showed up on a scan I was having for something else. It scared the hell out of me because I had witnessed a close relative die slowly in agony from the same disease. I gave up smoking completely within two days and have not had even one cigarette since.
I wish I could say I did that through will-power, but I didn’t because I was too much of an addict. Instead I got a basic vaporiser and used a strong nicotine content and found that the craving for cigarettes just disappeared after a couple of days.
If you think of doing this I’d recommend going for high nicotine at first then gradually reducing. I’d also recommend getting a good quality vaporiser with ‘air flow control’ so you can adjust it so it feels like you’re using a cigarette and set it on low power (about 10 watts). You can buy a good kit for less than €100. The cheap vape pens you can buy in newsagents etc. for about €25 are okay for the first few days but you’ll probably get fed up with them because they’re messy and not really like a cigarette, and be tempted to go back on the fags.
I now vape as often as I smoked, enjoy it more (and so do my family!), my lungs have improved rather than deteriorated at all, and it only costs me a small fraction of what smoking did. I guess averaged over a year and including the vape kit, fluid and spares etc. it costs less than about €15 a week.
Please don’t confuse discreet vaping as a replacement for cigarettes with the guys who produce huge clouds of vapour from vape kits that are more like car exhaust pipes because that’s a completely different scene altogether!
@Kieran Magennis: fair play! I started the vape and you described very well the difference between them. I just got a good one and I’m just delighted. I hope they won’t turn out to be dangerous too. I don’t wheeze at night and I’m only off them 8 weeks. I smoked 20 a day for 35 years.
@Eliza Mac: You have to replace the nicotine gum with normal gum. Thats what i did. I still have the nicotine gum, just in case I feel the urge to have a smoke. But the packet of nicontine gum lasts me three/four months.
I’m looking to start smoking. I’ve heard that it is expensive, addictive, anti-social, will make me less attractive to the opposite sex and off-putting in general and that I am at increased risk of many disorders and of dying a premature and painful death. Fortunately I am an idiot and I know somebody who knows somebody who smoked until they were 89 and then got knocked down by a bus anyway. So there! What do the scientists and doctors and actuaries know? It all sounds amazing. Can anyone give me any tips on how to get started? I was thinking of starting with unfiltered Gauloises. I’ve heard the filters only get in the way.
@Sean: You will probably need to light the cigarette and inhale….
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