But tobacco is addictive, and heavier smokers, as a group, have more difficulty ending their addiction and lower quit rates than other smokers.
Tobacco is the single most preventable cause of illness and death in the United States.
Two editorials accompany the papers. In the study, 30.6 percent of those who smoked fewer than 25 cigarettes per day and received the intervention succeeded in quitting compared to 27.5 percent in the comparison group. Earlier community-based research incorporated smoking cessation efforts with other activities in an effort to affect multiple health risk behaviors, and it has been difficult to isolate the impact of smoking cessation efforts. Furthermore, these studies were limited to a few communities that were not randomly assigned to the intervention or comparison group, and thus, inherent differences may have existed between the communities. Ten community pairs were in the United States and one pair was in Ontario, Canada.