In January of this year, on the 15th anniversary of the first Surgeon General's report on smoking and health, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare issued a 1,200-page update concluding that cigarette smoking is a major factor in 345,000 deaths each year due to cancer and heart and lung disease.
In November, the American Cancer Society (ACS) reported that lung cancer had become the second leading cancer killer among women. "As more women took up smoking, the lung cancer death rate tripled since 1965," said the ACS.
These statistics doubtless will provide sufficient motivation for some smokers to stop. Yet, fully 30 million smokers have tried to kick the addiction and failed, according to a 1975 survey commissioned by the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta.
Many of these would-be nonsmokers have discovered that quitting smoking, like dancing the tango, is hard to do by yourself. Among the numerous