Smoking Cessation Support

A population-level tobacco control practice that offers counselling, medication and telephone quitlines to help tobacco users quit, forming the offer-help component of the WHO's MPOWER framework for demand reduction under the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Its effect is substantial: counselling and medication together can more than double a tobacco user's chance of successful quitting. Telephone quitlines emerged as a delivery model in the early 1990s, and the California Smokers' Helpline, established in 1992, was the first in the United States to offer free cessation services statewide. The WHO reports that national comprehensive cessation services with cost coverage exist in only 31 countries covering a third of the world's population, so the gap between demand and provision is itself a public health finding.