Unaided smoking cessation: Great american smokeout and new year’s day quitters

A prospective study was conducted on 554 smokers in two cohorts (Great American Smokeout and New Year’s Day) who intended to quit smoking on their own without formalized external aid. The subjects were sequentially assigned to a frequent- contact group and an infrequent-contact group. All subjects completed a detailed baseline questionnaire and were followed for 12 months. Neither frequency of interviews nor cohort (Great American Smokeout or New Year’s Day) differentially affected outcome. The rate of nonsmoking at each follow-up point declined from 34 percent at one month to 25 percent at one year. Eleven percent of the subjects were continuous abstainers. Twenty-one percent of the subjects never stopped smoking, and 68 percent of those who ever quit had relapsed by one year. These results compare favorably with the outcomes of treatment studies. Continuous abstainers were lighter smokers, less addicted, more aware of the health risks associated with smoking, more highly motivated to stop, more confident of their ability to do so, and more committed to quitting at baseline than other subjects.