TXT2STOP quit smoking scheme a sucess

Over 50 years ago, a clear link between lung cancer and smoking cigarettes was established. Recently, statistics have been produced stating that around 86% of lung cancer cases are caused by continuous smoking which supports the idea that tobacco consumption is the single greatest cause of preventable illness and early death within the UK. But if the habit is this dangerous, why are people still smoking? With a large proportion of the UK being full time smokers, the only conclusion that has been reached for ignoring the many health warnings is that the habit is too hard to break.

There are many methods of help out there including: Nicotine Replacement Therapy and counselling however nothing seems to have been successful… until now! TXT2STOP was a study led by London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. It was a trail in which nearly 6,000 smokers were tested for the levels of cotinine (found in tobacco) found in their saliva after they had quit smoking for six months. The programme sent out motivational text messages to each of the participants and found the results to be rather extraordinary!

Five messages were sent each day for the first five weeks to each individual and then three messages a week for the remaining time. The scheme had its own personal system allowing the person to text ‘crave’ and in return, receive an instant message of support.

The results of 10.7% of smokers in the TXT2STOP group were able to quit fully, proven the scheme right, as within the smokers who didn’t follow the scheme, only 4.9% managed to quit.