12/11/97 

Dear Mrs A

Thank you for returning the smoking questionnaire recently.

We appreciate that you don't intend stopping smoking in the next six months.  But at the same time there are some things you don't like about your smoking, and we hope that this letter might give you some food for thought.

You smoke mainly because you enjoy it, and feel that if you stopped you would miss this enjoyment.  We can certainly understand how you feel.  But you are also aware of some of the down sides of your smoking, such as the cost.  Someone smoking 20 cigarettes a day actually spends £XX a week on cigarettes.  That's £XX a month, or £XXX a year.  Maybe there are other things you would enjoy spending that money on?

You are also aware of some of the health risks of smoking.  You don't think that your smoking is affecting your health at the moment (although your smoking could certainly be one thing causing your circulation problems).  But you think that your smoking is fairly likely to affect your health one day, and you specifically mentioned lung cancer.  You are absolutely right in this: if you smoke, your chances of getting lung cancer go up from 1 in 400 to 1 in 8.  And it has now been proven that passive smoking, for example by your children, increases their risk of lung cancer as well.

Smoking increases the risk of other health problems as well, for yourself and those around you.  These health problems include heart disease, strokes and bronchitis.  The good news is that if you stop smoking, the risk of all these illnesses falls back towards normal within about three years.

You told us you have tried to stop before, but didn't manage for more than a week.  You also don't think you would manage to stop if you tried again.  The main reason that people don't succeed when they try to stop smoking is that they are not really ready to stop: you said yourself that one of the reasons you didn't manage was because you didn't really want to stop.  Once someone has reached a definite decision that she really wants to stop, the chances of success are much higher: most people can stop if they really want to.

People can and do change their mind about wanting to stop smoking.  We hope this letter has encouraged you to think some more about your smoking.  Remember, it is never too late to stop.

Yours sincerely,