Smoking and cancer: Giving up Giving up is the best thing a smoker can do to improve their health. Quitting greatly reduces the risk of smoking-related cancers. The earlier you do it, the better. But equally it is never too late to gain valuable years of life by giving up on smoking. Most smokers say that they would like to give up if they could. But stopping isn't always simple. Emilie and Mark have both successfully given up after being smokers for years. They shared their stories with us, telling us how they did it, and how they feel now. Support yourself Quitting smoking can be hard, but free services and treatments are available to help and these have been shown to improve the chances of quitting successfully. Smokers are much more likely to quit successfully if they get professional support than if they try to go "cold-turkey". The NHS has a range of services on offer. Smokers can now pick up a new and improved NHS Quit Kit from thousands of pharmacies across England to help them stop smoking. The NHS Quit Kit has been developed by experts, smokers and ex-smokers, and contains practical tools and advice to help smokers quit smoking for good. For the first time, the Quit Kit includes a new text support programme to give smokers extra help in those tough first weeks. This autumn the Department of Health is launching the Stoptober campaign. Research shows that if you can stop smoking for 28 days,