B: p2-d2.txt Dear Mr. Smith, Thank you for completing the smoking survey recently. You told us that you do not intend stopping smoking in the forseeable future. We wonder whether you might be interested all the same in thinking a little more about your smoking. At present you do not want to stop smoking, because you enjoy smoking, it helps you relax, and it is something to do in company. However, there are some things you don't like about your smoking. It costs you money, and you feel it makes you less fit. Smoking is certainly expensive: 30 cigarettes a day costs XX per week, which is XX per month, or XX per year. There is sure to be something else you could do with that money! And smoking is well recognised to reduce fitness, particularly for heavier smokers such as yourself. One reason why many people stop smoking is because of their health. You have told us that this is not a concern for you, because you do not think that your smoking will damage your health. You mentioned that you suffer from bad circulation, but that you don't think this has anything to do with your smoking. In fact, it has been clearly shown that smoking does significantly increase people's risk of many serious illnesses, including circulation problems. Smokers are also more likely than non-smokers to suffer heart attacks, strokes, bronchitus, and lung cancer. The size of the risk increases with the amount you smoke. For example, for someone smoking 20 or 30 cigarettes per day, the risk of developing lung cancer is 1 in 8, instead of 1 in 400 for a non-smoker. The good news is that as soon as someone stops smoking, their risk of developing these illnesses begins to fall. Although it might take several years for the risks to return to normal, the benefit begins immediately. It is never too late to stop smoking: even after many years of smoking, your health will improve if you stop. The same goes for your fitness: within a few weeks of stopping, you would feel noticeably fitter. You told us that you have tried to stop smoking before, but didn't manage to stay stopped for more than a week. You feel that one reason why you didn't manage was because you really didn't want to stop in the first place. You also said that you would not feel confident about managing to stop smoking even if you did try. This is realistic, because if you do not really want to stop smoking, you are very unlikely to succeed. However, there is every chance that, like most people who smoke, you could stop if you really wanted to. At the moment you don't want to, but many people do change their minds and decide to stop smoking. This is usually a gradual change of mind, and maybe some of the information in this letter will get you thinking about the possibility of stopping one day.