Recognizing the potential for policies to motivate quitting, clinicians, programmers and educators must also see themselves as advocates to a much greater degree. Those who work directly with smokers bring added credibility to the debate. It is very powerful for individual programmers to inform politicians that their activities are undermined by lack of political action. This course of action does not, as some readers might fear, amount to cessation programmers lobbying for the elimination of their jobs. While redistribution of resources may, in the short term, result in a shrinking of cessation activities, in the long run it will greatly increase demand and resources for cessation programs.
Public policy has an enormous impact on smoking cessation.
It could do much more to motivate cessation and recruit smokers to cessation assistance. A recognition of this should compel a reorientation of the way in which cessation interventions are viewed and how resources are directed. A move away from individual counselling to a public health approach will create population-based smoking reductions due to quitting, something which cessation programming alone has been unable to achieve. Smoking Cessation Techniques. The Evaluation of New Health Warning Messages .