Aubin et al. BMC Public Health 2010, 10:100 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/10/100 As emphasized by other authors [26-29], a majority of smokers didn’t use any form of smoking cessation medi- cation during their last quit attempt. For those who used some form of support, nicotine patch was the most popular treatment. Price of treatment and treatment- emergent adverse events were rarely reported as reasons for relapse. It is noteworthy that, considering a future attempt, more smokers intend to use smoking cessation medications, even though 28% considered the price of a smoking cessation program as a significant barrier to smoking cessation. Accordingly with the reported reasons for having relapsed from the previous quit attempt, this repre- sentative sample of smokers didn’t seem to consider t h e r i s k o f d e v e l o p i n g d e p r e s s i o n a s a s i g n i f i c a n t barrier to smoking cessation. In contrast, the risk of not controlling stress and of developing anxiety and i r r i t a b i l i t y w e r e t h e l e a d i n g b a r r i e r s t o s m o k i n g cessation. Finally, only 40% of smokers reported intending to quit smoking definitively. This may seem a small num- ber compared to other reports [6,30]. However, most smokers declaring an intention to quit smoking, do not intend to do so definitively [31]. This study had some limitations: the response rate was 66%, and older and retired people were over-repre- sented. The weighting however corrected this bias to some extent, since its efficacy was 76.5%. These sam- pling biases are in the range of French competing sur- veys [6,7]. Conclusions The most sticking findings from the analysis of the first wave of the FOCUS cohort are that smoking prevalence was much lower than in previous reports. Smoking ces- sation rates were also reduced. Reasons for these differ- ences were unclear. Cost and social pressure were the main reasons for quitting smoking, maybe an effect of dramatic tax increases and smoking ban. Depression was not considered as a significant trigger for relapse or barrier to quit smoking. Author details 1Hôpital Paul Brousse (AP-HP), Villejuif, France, Hôpital Emile Roux(AP-HP), Limeil-Brévannes, INSEM U699, France. 2Pneumologie CHR METZ, France. 3Epidaure Département de prévention CRLC Montpellier, France. 4Unité de Recherche Clinique, AP-HP, Hôpital Fernand Widal, Paris, France. 5PFIZER Paris, France. 6TNS Healthcare, Montrouge, France. 7Département de Cardiologie Médicale Institut de Cardiologie Groupe Hospitalier Pitié- Salpêtrière, Paris, France. Authors’ contributions HJA, GP, ASD, EV, YJ, AS, GB, DT conceived and designed the study and participated to the discussion of the results, and helped top draft. HJA wrote the manuscript. GB performed the survey and the statistical analysis. YJ and AS coordinated the study. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. Page 7 of 8 Competing interests HJA has received sponsorship to attend scientific meetings, speaker honorariums and consultancy fees from Pfizer, McNeil, GlaxoSmithKline, Pierre-Fabre Sante, Sanofi-Aventis, and Merck-Lipha. GP has received sponsorship to attend scientific meetings, speaker honorariums and consultancy fees from Pfizer, McNeil, GlaxoSmithKline, Pierre-Fabre Sante, Roche and Sanofi-Aventis ASD has received sponsorship to attend scientific meetings from GlaxoSmithKline, Pierre-Fabre Sante, Pfizer, Sanofi-Aventis, McNeil, Novartis. EV received lecture fees from the sponsor and honoraria for participation to advisory boards and steering committee meetings of another trial funded by Pfizer. YJ and AS are employees of Pfizer. The company of GB, TNS Healthcare, was funded by Pfizer. 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