Plain packaging works

In Australia, there is evidence of smokers getting marginalised into extinction. Australia was the first country in the world to introduce plain packaging. Plain packaging is anything but plain. The front and back of all cigarette packs have sickening photos of tobacco related illnesses. All logos and corporate colour schemes are removed and replaced by a drab brown background. The only indication of the brand is a tiny panel on the front.  Every brand name is laid out in exactly the same size and  typeface. There is almost no way of telling one brand from another.

The result of this is that the percentage of people smoking is plummeting in Australia. The government has pledged to keep increasing the cost of cigarettes each year until they are unaffordable. All of this would be expected to lead to what is being seen, a fairly rapid reduction in people smoking.

Smokers getting marginalised

But the government campaign has had an odd side effect. It is not just targeting smokers. It is also having an effect on non-smokers. Over many years laws and regulations have restricted where smokers can smoke. It started with banning smoking in restaurants. Then smoking was banned in pubs.  Later this was extended to every public indoor area. Smoking was banned in jail. Employers started banning smoking in the workplace. So smokers started congregating outside.

This led to the creation of "smoking hot spots" where smokers congregated. To break up this "public nuisance" many states have extended the bans even further. Smoking is banned within 10 m of any playground and on railway platforms, taxi ranks, and bus stops.

The result is that smokers are now being herded into less and less attractive places. The only place they can smoke are places no one else wants to be. The result is a change in public perception. Smokers are getting associated with the places where they smoke. Dirty unpleasant places equals dirty unpleasant people.

So there is increasing social pressure from non-smokers to clear out these smoking places. In the long run this may be just as effective as putting up the price.

Stop smoking NLP programming

I have just noticed the new stop smoking NLP service being offered on the Internet. The marketing approach is low-key. It avoids the common hype of screaming banners and flashing pop-ups. Which is nice.

What I find interesting is the approach. The marketing for this service says that it hypnotises you in order to remove the programming that makes you smoke.

Whether this works or not depends on whether smokers are actually "programmed". If you are not programmed, then you cannot be deprogrammed. The whole idea of "programming" is at the heart of NLP. NLP started back in the 70s when computer programming was the latest and greatest technology. Every business idea wanted to use the term "programming".  But there is no direct evidence that the human mind is actually programmed, in the same way that computers are "programmed".

The marketing also claims that NLP can program you to feel that you have never smoked. And if you feel like someone who has never smoked, then the idea of smoking will just never occur to you. In my experience, this kind of modelling works for a couple of days, at most. At the first touch of stress, the person reverts back to their standard way of responding.

Smoking to feel sad

The second part uses NLP to associate smoking with a feeling. The advertising says that the CD put you into hypnosis, then get you to think of something in your life that made you sad. Then they use NLP to link that feeling of sadness to smoking. So that every time you have a cigarette, a period of sadness overwhelms you. The marketing says that you will find no difficulty in giving up smoking, if every time you have a smoke you feel sad and tearful.

A separate part of the process uses NLP to link not smoking to some joyous event in your life. So that every time you think of not having a cigarette, those feelings rise up in you.

It is certainly an interesting idea. However, NLP has a very spotty record of success. I studied it personally for many years. But I came to the conclusion that most of it just didn't work. The NLP community has never managed to prove that "programming" is anything more than a metaphor.

I would be very interested to know if this actually works.

Cigarette smoking habits are now changing

Cigarette smoking habits are now changing all over the world. But there is nothing new about this. During the history of smoking cigarettes have gone in and out of fashion. When first introduced to England, tobacco was seen as a sign of international travel. Then it was banned totally.  Then it was accepted by everyone, and created huge fortunes for tobacco merchants. Then there was a reaction against cigarettes. Cigarette smoking was blamed for mental illness. Then it flipped again. Tobacco was seen as being good, and smoking was recommended by doctors. And now smoking is evil.

In the 1700's the normal way of smoking tobacco was with a pipe.  Everyone, from the highest to the lowest; men, women and children, smoked clay pipes. However, fashions change. In the UK the more sophisticated classes took to using snuff. Some chewed it. Then, by the 1800s, the upper classes switched to cigars. Only the poorest people used cigarettes. In the USA it was different again. By the middle of the 1800's, the most common way of using tobacco  in the US was chewing it. 

Cigarette smoking habits in the Victorian Era

In Britain, the Crimean War changed smoking habits forever. The Crimean War was immensely popular in Britain, in part at least because of the mythology of the Charge of the Light Brigade. When the troops got home people started to copy what the returned soldiers did. During the war, British troops found themselves fighting in bitter cold and so were allowed to grow beards to avoid frostbite. This started a fashion for beards in all levels of English society.

The result was that most images of people in late Victorian times show them being covered in beards and sideburns. The British troops got to know Turkish troops, their allies. And the British troops started to copy the Turkish habit of rolling tobacco in paper and smoking it. They brought this habit back with them. Ordinary people wanted to copy their heroes, so cigarettes became fashionable. 

At that time manufactured cigarettes were available, but they were handmade, and relatively expensive. The first effective cigarette making machine was patented in 1880. In the next few years, cigarettes dropped in price dramatically. Machine-made cigarettes were much more practical. However, they still had the stigma of being associated with the lower classes. The upper classes in the UK still smoked their cigars. King Edward IV even had cigars named after him.

Cigarettes as social protest

The switch to widespread cigarette smoking was started by artists. At the turn of the 19th/20th century many doctors believed that cigarette smoking caused mental disorders. Therefore anyone who smoke cigarettes was defying social convention. And this suited members of a developing art movement. They wanted to show that they rejected everything that was normal and accepted. Artists were mostly from the upper class at this time. Ordinary people couldn't afford to be artists, they had to work.

So these upper-class artists started smoking cigarettes publicly, in the bars where they met. They started painting cigarettes into their portraits. This was shocking to the rest of the class they lived in. Which delighted the artists. They saw themselves as revolutionaries. They saw themselves as defying all conventions. Added to that, they were openly defying advice about risking sending themselves mad. And could use cigarette smoking as an excuse for any kind of wild behaviour.

Gradually, the association of cigarette smoking with glamorous artists, bohemian living, free love, open sexuality and all the rest of it, gave cigarette smoking a sense of glamour. Movie stars started smoking. This had an immense effect on public ideas about smoking, particularly seeing women smoking on screen.

Cigarette smoking habits dying out

Manufacturers and advertisers jumped onto the boom and promoted cigarettes everywhere. There was so successful at this that public perception changed totally. Cigarettes were now seen as a good thing. The Army actually gave cigarettes free to their soldiers. In the 1950s, doctors would recommend you take up smoking as a way of dealing with stress. Smoking reached epidemic proportions. In some places 80% of people smoked. You could smoke anywhere.

And then major health problems began to be seen in the population. There is nothing new about this. As far back as the 1890s, cigarettes had been called "coffin nails". It was obvious that smoking was unhealthy. But it took another 60 years for public awareness to turn into alarm.

Today, smoking is universally condemned. Governments are moving to stamp out smoking in their populations. So this may well be the very last stage of the history of tobacco consumption.

And we hypnotherapists can play our part too.

Smokers do not know why they smoke

I had an interesting smoking client today. This man has given up several times but always starts again. He started smoking three weeks ago, after having given up for four months using Champix. Previously he had given up for a year and half , also with Champix.

I kept asking him why he smoked, and what he got from smoking. He said he did not know. I kept pressing him and he said "I'm not the kind of person who analyses things deeply." He did not know why he started smoking again. I asked him how he felt when he give up smoking. He told me that he felt stronger and more active but it stopped him sleeping well. The information about sleeping made me suspect that in fact he had "black and white thinking".
I showed him the dysthymia grid I use. This shows all the signs and symptoms of dysthymia. And he began smiling as he recognized himself there.

Indicators of dysthymia

We talked about dysthymia and it gradually unfolded that he had had it all his life. I explained to him that it was partly genetic and partly environment. I said you will probably find that some members of your extended family are angry, alcoholics, loners and so on. He immediately said "Yes, my grandfather was a drinker. And my father is a worrier".
We went back to talking about why he smoked and what he felt just before he smoked. He could not identify any particular feeling, or situation, which prompted him to smoke. He said "I just like to go outside and have a break now and then".

And that was the clue to why he smoked. He actually had a fairly mild form of dysthymia. He had expectations of how things should go. When he had done what you thought was right at work, and things still went wrong, he got irritated. This is classic dysthymia behavior. In his case he dealt with the irritation by stepping outside and having a smoke. He admitted he often didn't actually want the smoke. He would like one up, smoke half of it, and throw it away. And pace up and down for a while. But he couldn't give up.
He was smoking as a way of dealing with his frustration. As long as he did not understand the source of his frustration he would continue to start smoking again whatever the level of frustration got high enough.

It's not about stopping smoking, it's about stopping starting.

He had already stopped smoking many times. His problem isn't stopping smoking. He knows how to do that. His problem is stopping starting again. So we spent some time discussing how he was going to deal with his frustration. He said  that instead of going out for a smoke he would take my suggestion and go out for a walk around the block.
I therefore put him into hypnosis and used my standard stop smoking routine. But I added in some extra suggestions about monitoring his own level of frustration and using this is a trigger to get more exercise.

I think it very interesting that so many smokers never give a thought to why they smoke, or when they smoke, or look for patterns in it. The pattern is usually fairly obvious once you look for it.