You can stop smoking

Abstract

You can stop smoking! How do I know? I know because September 2 marked the end of my fifth year of total abstinence from tobacco in any form. During the last two of the ten and a half years I used tobacco, I was inhaling the smoke of two packages of cigarettes, an occasional cigar, and several pipefuls of tobacco each day. As I look back on the day I laid that last pack of cigarettes on the shelf and vowed never to smoke again, it seems that quitting tobacco was easy. Yet as I think of the many efforts I made to quit and the many motives I had for leading me finally to the ultimate decision, I am convinced that laying tobacco aside was one of the most difficult things I have ever actually accomplished. In leading up to the decision to stop smoking, it is best to go back some sixteen or seventeen years to the days before I started smoking. During the time I was in high school, I was under the leadership of coaches and other teachers who believed and taught that smoking was harmful to all people and particularly to growing boys and girls. Those teachers served as living examples of this belief by refraining from the use of tobacco. I was a member of the Hi-Y and Leaders