At Issue; 16; How to Stop Smoking

―Yena, i niinga takati oachi oacheli? You cannot promise that you are going to stop smoking? Utilise your will, power or power of choice? We would suggest to you at day after day, morning noon and night that you continue saying these words, Ops Hellpid noctis Fato'și'people on a!.. Ops Hellpids noctis Ops Hellpid noctis Ops Hellpids noctis I, first of all, I realised that it was a hindrance to my help. Which has been proven by the fact of these medical reports that I've been coming out. Also that it does cost money. You don't get nothing from nothing. And these cigarettes are expensive.

...and I just don't see why people pay money to shorten their lives. National Educational Television presents... ...at Issue, a commentary on events and people in the news. At Issue, this week, how to stop smoking? A look at the health available to those who want to break the cigarette habit. Recently, the Surgeon General of the United States presented a report on the medical dangers of smoking cigarettes. There is a definite significant health hazard associated with cigarette smoking. This degree of this hazard is related to the amount of smoking, both in terms of the amount in a day's time and over the period of a lifetime. And that the best way to avoid this hazard is never to a smoke, but one who has smoked can decrease the magnitude of this health hazard.

And improve his chances by ceasing to smoke or even possibly in cutting down. As a result of this strong medical stand against cigarettes, and even before this particular report, many people are choosing to try to stop smoking. First, psychologist, Impal Lotton of the Philadelphia home for the Jewish aged, who is conducting experiments to help people stop smoking under a grant from the American Cancer Society. Adolescence begins smoking for a variety of reasons, the most obvious of which is curiosity. You see, people around them having fun, they wonder what it's all about, so they try it. Curiosity then leads into imitation, that is, parents, older brothers and sisters, admired contemporaries, are seen smoking, and they wish to identify with the people that they see smoking. Perhaps the most important reason is the symbolic value of smoking as signaling entrance into adulthood.

For boys, it may make them look more masculine, for girls, it perhaps gives a feeling that they can become more popular by conforming. Once inhaling is learned, physiological reasons assume greater importance, that as nicotine seems to be an essential part of the smoking experience for many people. Most people, though, will tell you when asked why they smoke that it relieves their nervous tension, that is, it gives them something to do with their hands, it fills time, it relieves feelings or social embarrassment, that is, gives the chance to do nothing gracefully. Offering a cigarette to another person is a means of approaching another person. A cigarette can offer gratification for infantile needs, the kind of need to put something in one's mouth, and finally, smoking gives a variety to life, it gives a chance to observe the smoke, to feel the inhaling, to manipulate the cigarette, to give novelty. We can distinguish various types of smokers, there is the Epicurean, he is a person who enjoys his wine, his women, his comfort, his tobacco, unfortunately there are very few of these, smokers are too busy relieving their tensions to enjoy it.

Then there is the diddler, he is always lighting his cigarettes, snuffing them out, losing them, finding them, patting his pocket, spreading ashes, he is always in motion. Then we have the bottomless pit, who also has a gaping mouth, there is never enough to fill it. The silent menace has never learned to laugh or to love or to blow his top, instead he blows his smoke in other people's faces. In the last two years, 1800 smokers around this country have been exposed to the seventh day Adventist five day crash program to stop smoking. Organized as the National Health Foundation, Pastor Falcon Berg and Dr. McFarlane have staged meetings with 1500 people at a time, they say 50% of the audience have lost their major craving for tobacco as a result of their meetings. Before the first meeting in New York, we have some smokers why they wanted to give up smoking.

Because I feel weak, I'd like to give it up, I'd like to find some sort of strength even if I can't find it within myself. It makes me nauseous. I spent too much money on it and it's no good for you. I've even seen my family doctor and he gives me advice and I know as he gives me advice he's got a cigarette in his own hand, so I don't know which way to tear it. Of course I have a little heart condition and I was through the doctor and he said I have trouble me the lung. Have you ever tried to stop or an hour, two hours, three hours? The day is longer and longer and longer. I'm getting nervous and somebody says to me something, I'm getting more nervous, don't I start to smoke. We have more constantly fight about it. You don't know what's good for you, why don't you stop and he said don't make me nervous, I can't do it. Well, I'm scared.

Smokers get five consecutive daily talks by a team of doctors and ministers. They start with psychology and excitation. The Reverend Elman Falconberg. When you have a craving and a desire to smoke, you can actively resist this because the mind being the capital of the body and the controlling function of the body and the set here, you can actually resist the physical craving to smoke. And it will work because as you think this has a direct effect upon the body. Then the clinical approach to smoking. Dr. Williams-Weddick, a diplomat of the American Board of Pathology. We know, for instance, that people who have peptic ulcers that very frequently their doctors tell them that either they must stop smoking or they're going to have very little success in the treatment and trying to control the ulcer problem. Here is a peptic ulcer right here at this area. Incidentally, this is the stomach and this is a portion of the small bowel. The ulcer is right here, while you may not see it right in the center of an ulcer, is a little blood vessel and this patient probably blood to death from this blood vessel which was ulcerated by the inflammation. The audience is exposed to a film of an actual operation on a lung cancer victim. They're warned when not to look if they're squeamish. Some do.

The would-be non-smokers get tips on how to cut down on a nicotine craving and withdrawal discomfort by Dr. Williams-Weddick. Now, a therapeutic argument is to get people off this nicotine and get the nicotine out of their systems as fast as possible. Therefore, we advise a large intake of fluids along with this, fruits and fruit juices to give good nutrition and plenty of sugars of a natural sort. We like to have people omit coffee for the five days of the five-day plan because coffee oftentimes triggers a desire for a smoke. And we say no condiments or at least rather a bland diet for this particular period. Plenty of rest relaxation as much sleep as you can get during this period because you're going through a period of stress. Then there are things that are tepid bales, for instance, oxygen to the central nervous system by deep breathing.

We like to have hip practice that, get the long back in the air system, get the oxygen, because the oxygen tends to destroy the nicotine. After a few days, it's pretty well destroyed, removed from the system. I think the first three days are the hardest after that. You begin to feel much better and the symptoms will disappear. Ladies and gentlemen, you've been coming along to these programs. You have seen night by night, these people breaking the smoking habit. You've been living sort of one hour at a time, one day at a time. Some of you have seen cigarettes about six inches in front of your eyes all the time, dancing wherever you look there they were, but you couldn't quite grab them. They were not quite real. Now remember this, you knew that you would come here night after night to group therapy, you knew that you could depend upon the poggum, the sort of shot in the arm of a large number of people doing the same thing, but now wait a moment. You've been living just a day at a time, you're going to have to now think about extending your world power out.

In other words, you've just been living in small segments till noon I won't smoke, till dinner I will not smoke. Now let's suggest that you begin to think in longer terms. I choose not to smoke here for a whole week. I choose not to smoke for two weeks, and begin getting your mind into longer and longer thought patterns. I choose not to smoke all the rest of this month, and begin thinking this earnestly, making up your mind always choosing by the power of choice. Ladies and gentlemen, you can make it. There's no shot over doubt. You can, if you will. After that last lecture, we asked some people who'd gone through the five day plan if they felt they could continue not smoking. Somehow I had the confidence in myself. I really believe it's a wonderful thing, and I'm going to follow it through. Actually, I gave up smoking cigarettes almost a year ago and became a chain cigar smoker, and I didn't think I could give up tobacco entirely, but now I think we've both found that this course has made it relatively easy. I'm not going to smoke any more of it ever.

I'm going to try awfully hard, but I doubt it. I don't know, but what do you truly say? I'll hang her if she smokes. I stopped smoking immediately, and even under all kinds of stresses, I did not reach for a cigarette because I chose not to smoke. Many doctors consider smoking to be an addiction which means medical and psychological treatment. At Cornell University Medical Center in New York, Dr. Boerge, Arup of Sweden, operates a pilot clinic for patients who must but cannot stop smoking. In Sweden, Dr. Arup's clinics had a high percentage of success for short periods. Here, he discusses his treatment with a former patient and reporter, Al Pearlmutter. Dr. Arup clinics are usually associated with disease. Why did you decide to use a clinical approach to keep smokers from smoking? A smoking seems to be such a difficult thing to quit, and it's a psychological addiction, perhaps also in chemical. Therefore, it's necessary sometimes to have a medical approach to the problem.

We need to give or support the smoker in his breaking of the habit and to helping with the symptoms and to helping to stay on as a non-smoker. What can be done with the injections and tablets and such things? I understand you've been working on a pilot project at Cornell Medical Center here in New York with patients. Could you tell us about it? Yes, it's just in the beginning. It's a research study. It's not an open clinic. But we started half a year ago in June, and our first patient, Mr. William O'Shea, is here today for a check-up. And you have been now a non-smoker or are you smoking now after six months? No. You are a non-smoker. You are a heavy smoker?

I smoke three packs a day and we can smoke four and five packs a day. How long have you been smoking? And 98% of the patients in Sweden have health reasons for why they want to stop smoking. As I remember, you had very severe health reasons and medical problems. Yes, I was told by the doctors that if I did not stop smoking, I would eventually lose my legs and I had my leg operated on. We will have it operated on in the near future for nicotine poisoning. How was this accomplished at your clinic? How did you get Mr. O'Shea who has been smoking for so many years to stop smoking? We divide the difficulty center two parts by injecting nicotine or nicotine substitute. During the time that the patient has to break his habit by his own will, we can only support his effort. And we supported with tablets of such a type that suit the individual patient. That's important.

There are a lot of commercials in the market using the same substance, lobbling that I am using. But these commercials are not approaching the problem in the same way at all. We are doing heavy dosage to saturate the body. It seems to be easier for the patient with medical help of that type. We have, for example, had good results in eight years in Stockholm, Sweden. 7,000 patients treated. 76% stopped entirely and we have 98% good results. Do you think similar clinics would be valuable elsewhere? I am sure it will, because there is a great need for it. And I hope, and I am sure there will be clinics open all over the world because of that great need. Thank you very much, gentlemen.

Roswell Park Memorial Hospital in Buffalo has developed a unique program to cut the cancer toll of cigarettes. They work for legislation, have an educational propaganda program, and conduct an experimental clinic to find out how to help people stop smoking. Here is Dr. Morton Levin, chairman of their Secret and Cancer Committee. The clinic is an attempt to see whether a simple and rather short procedure, using certain predicaments, would be effective in helping people give up smoking. We have taken four groups of 60 people each. They have met as a group on an evening. They have been given lectures on the health hazards of smoking. They have been told how the clinic would operate. They have been asked to fill out various forms regarding their reactions to the predicaments, which they have been given to help them give up smoking. And to record any side reactions and to come back at the end of the week with their report.

They are then given a brief physical examination and given a supply of three types of predicaments. One to reduce appetite, one to act as a substitute for nicotine, and the other to act as a substitute for the cigarette. Which they can take whenever they feel that they have to do something, like smoking a cigarette, instead of which they take one of these lozenges. Half the people receive the predicaments which are active and half receive the predicaments which are inactive. Of course, they don't know which is which. Up to date, although the time is short and normally small, it does appear that from 40 to 70% of these people give up smoking within the first week or two. And there does seem to be some difference between those who receive the active predicaments and those who receive the inactive, but I think it's too soon to be certain of this. For the worried smoker who may try all these methods and still can't give up his cigarettes, Dr. Levin has some hope. One of the avenues which seemed worse pursuing was the possibility of developing a cigarette which was either harmless or at least less harmful than one containing tobacco.

And we've experimented with various types of leaves, other than tobacco, to determine whether it is possible to develop such a cigarette. This is a very complex conductive job trying to reproduce the very same process as that concerned in commercial cigarettes. And up to the present, we have produced one or two cigarettes which are fairly acceptable, although not as yet fully equal in acceptability to the tobacco cigarette. We have as yet to test these cigarettes for their harmful effects, for example, as an animal. That remains to be done. Here are two smokers who have been at it for years and two who belong to non-smokers club at East New York Vocational High School. They're talking about smoking with teacher Robert Rubin.

Did your friends influence you in giving up smoking or starting smoking? The fellows in the group I was hanging out with. Everybody had a smoke. I was hanging out with older boys at the time. And most of them were smoking. And as an effect of that, I just followed them. You see, I followed the crowd too. That's the only reason why I really started smoking. Because all the fellows had their cigarettes and they blow smoke in your face. Well, I know one thing I heard when I was reading where a doctor said smoking is actually like taking small doses of poison a little at a time. And eventually it's going to affect the system. Well, because I noticed certain little effects like in breathing or the ring of a fly stays. Because after a while, I had to disagree over there because I smoked and I used to be on a swimming team and it really never really affected me. My coach told me not to smoke and all but I smoked as much as I did now as I was on a team and it never really stopped my breathing and I shortened my breath.

Now when I was swimming. That was because he was young. He was a place starting. It could be true. It's used a couple of years ago. How did advertising, TV advertising affect your smoking habits? I feel it's kind of stupid because a few buy a mental cigarette and you take a dread of a mental cigarette. You're not going to be in Florida or you're not going to be rolling a boat in the beautiful water. It's just a mental cigarette. Personally, I don't even enjoy them. And about these wide open countries, I'm sitting in my house and I'm having a cigarette. I'm not having a wide open country. I'm in my house. I think it's the way they go about it. It's kind of silly. I think it's quite deceiving too now to mention it because this is because they play football. They're good swimmers or whatever sport they're in. How do they know about these cigarettes? They might like them. That doesn't mean they're good cigarettes. As far as teenage boys and smoke like this, there's ways to smoke.

You get these guys there, 12 years old. They have a cigarette dangling out of their mouth. They walk around with knives in their hands and love their jackets. Those boys just smoke because they want to be adults. They want to be part of the big people's world. They hang out to a cigarette for their courage or whatever they need to back them up. Why didn't you stop with all these arguments? Well, because of the habit, I mean, I'm trying to cut down now, but I realize that it can give me cancer. I never really believed it at first because it was never really proven. But after when you see all these important people getting together and the government, when you see the government spending money on something like this, that's when I realized that it must be important for us to try to let me stop smoking. That's why I'm trying to cut it down now and completely stop. Now, then I must ask you two boys one more question. You know, you're 16, 17 years of age right now. It wouldn't be very long before you become family men. Will you encourage your children to smoke? I won't. I wouldn't want my son to smoke. Why not?

Because I can see that it is starting to give me ill effects. In my breathing, my voice, my coughing a night, and I wouldn't want my son to go through it. If he could take up another hobby or a sport or something else to ease his tensions, I'd rather haven't do that. I wouldn't encourage him at all in smoking. Then how about you, then? How did you stop? How did I stop? What methods did you use to stop smoking? I avoided those people who did it, and I just completely stopped it. Then why I'm no more enough like that then? How did you feel after you stopped? Did you actually feel better? I felt better because I found other ways of relieving tension and feeling much more ease. I didn't have to always result to a cigarette. How about you? In my case with these reports, that was really the thing that drove it home. I mean, I stopped because I started feeling the effects. Then I started hearing these reports, and I did it. And after you stopped, did you feel better? I didn't feel no different though. Not at all, nothing. I see. And do you feel that if you stop now, don't you think you would feel better? I know, I would.

They said it would add 10 years on to your life. That would make me feel better. A sociologist has just completed a study of why some young people smoke and others don't. William Kappetman of the Centre for Research in Marketing. High school students, whether they smoke or do not smoke, are highly aware of the connection between cancer and smoking. Yet some of them smoke and some of them don't. That they're aware is indicated by the fact that 80% of those who smoke claim to have tried to stop and been unable to. Just this bit of evidence makes it perfectly clear that simply stating the logical and rational connection between smoking and cancer is not going to be enough to induce a high school smoker to quit. What accounts for the difference between the kid who smokes and the kid who doesn't smoke in high school? We've got some interesting evidence. Some of it says, for example, that the smoker has poor grades, hangs around with the wrong sort of kids. He's generally lacking in what sociologists call peer group satisfaction. He's not getting what he should out of high school or giving what he should.

In another test, he reveals that perhaps some were even deep-seated problems. We are smokers to tell us what they thought of smokers and non-smokers. Here's what they tell us about non-smokers. They said they were relaxed, alert, bright, happy, sociable, stout, friendly, very positive picture. Now we would expect that they would be at least equally positive about smokers. But here's what these high school smokers say about smokers. They say their tents, middle-aged, thin, lazy, sloppy, sickly, unattractive, highly negative picture. Raises an interesting question. Are these teenagers devaluing themselves? Are they saying we're not worth much anyway? We might as well enjoy smoking? It's fairly obvious that a direct logical appeal is not going to induce these children to quit smoking.

We need propaganda that will reach them as effectively as the propaganda which makes smoking pleasant, presently does. That means we need money to spend on propaganda that is anti-smoking. You need parental influences. About 7% of the kids who smoke do so against their parents' wishes, that is most of them are being, in most cases, the parents are approving. This means parents have to say no, whether they smoke or not, and tell the kids that you must not smoke. Dr. Lawton discusses the techniques he uses to help people become non-smokers. I found that getting a group of people together who really wished quit smoking is a very potent way of achieving this end. That is when people are able to discuss their feelings about their habit, particularly their feelings of disgust with themselves, and their annoyance at feelings, if they have to quit, there's something innately therapeutic in this. They are also able to get support from other people when they are going through the misery of trying to quit, and they can also use the others in the group to compete with, to add their own motivation.

There are a number of things that an individual can do to help himself quit smoking, even if he does not have a group to meet with. He may substitute less harmful pleasures for smoking, for instance eating, gum chewing, knitting, one thing or another. He may also do well to avoid situations that are linked with the enjoyment of smoking, his favorite armchair or the second cup of coffee after supper. He can announce to his friends that he's quit smoking, and so to speak, go on record that he is definitely going to quit and find a harder to back out of it. He may also get some satisfaction in telling people how miserable he is during the process of trying to give it up, playing up the willpower that's necessary to withstand this misery.

Finally, he can always become an authority on quitting smoking and try to get other people to quit.