First Draft, Final Paper — Smoking & Solutions

Abstract

There has been a drastic change in the lifestyle and routine over the years. People are more occupied with work as well as interpersonal relationships because of which they experience a lot more stress, negative moods, and anxiety. These changes have made humans inclined towards non-healthy ways for stress relief and cope up mechanisms and smoking is one such major outlet. There are 1.3 billion smokers in the world today, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). If the trend continues, that number is expected to increase to 1.6 billion by the year 2025.

There are a variety of mobile applications available in the market that help people track their smoke consumption. Not just that, these applications provide the statistics around the same and motivate people to stop. However, there is no one perfect solution or product that works for all people. Some of the reasons are the varying levels of addiction and consumption, the different intentions of why people smoke, and different levels of conviction. The intent of this paper is to understand the situations that lead people to smoke while studying the effect of some proposed solutions on psychology to these people. The target audience for this study is only the kind of people who have the motivation and willingness to quit smoking.

Index Terms

Stop smoking, quit smoking, smoking cessation, prevent smoking, smoking diseases, solutions to smoking, Nicotine, Tobacco Control

1 Introduction

Smoking is a supreme cause of death. Tobacco kills more than 8 million people each year, translating to one smoking-related death every five seconds. That is a million more deaths than occur each year as a result of HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria combined. On average, smoking will cut 13 years from your life expectancy. However, it is preventable. People who smoke are degrading their immunity to fight diseases, which leads them to become unhealthy. The effect cannot be reversed but damage can definitely be recovered from. Researchers have studied solutions that can help people quit smoking and improvements on the body.

At the same time, it all boils down to individuals under consideration. No amount of inspiration works unless the person himself is dedicated to quit the habit of smoking and work on his body. There are plenty of effective methods to help quit once the person is driven for the cause.

There are a lot of alternatives available out there for cigarettes especially. For instance, e-cigarettes help in simulating the effect of an actual cigarette. An organic cigarette is another example. All of these replacements are harmful. These might not contain Tobacco but continue to have Nicotine. They do not help in quitting rather the opposite.

I came up with the idea of studying the intent of smokers and devising a solution for it after an experience with a close friend. His father passed away recently due to lung cancer. He was a heavy smoker and so is my friend. After seeing what his father had to go through he decided to give up smoking and reached out to me for help. It was then that I started looking up and got interested in the topic.

2 Background Work

Vulnerability to becoming a smoker, the likelihood of smoking in a given situation, and individual differences in smoking patterns are influenced by complex interactions of nicotine with genetically influenced differences in brain functioning, psychological traits, learning, and responses to contextual states.

Thus as a part of the research, it becomes important to conduct user interviews, studies and reached out to some organizations that have been doing some great work towards smoking as well as examine some existing solutions closely.

2.1 Vital Strategies Organisation

It is a global health organization that designs solutions to pressing health problems. As a partner in the Bloomberg Initiative to Reduce Tobacco use, Vital Strategies supports the adoption of lifesaving policies that reach hundreds of millions of people around the world.

They strongly voice the fact the Tobacco could kill one billion people this century, yet the tobacco industry aggressively markets to children, promotes pseudoscience to confuse, and lobbies against effective policies to reduce smoking and protect health. Unless urgent action is taken to reverse this global epidemic, tobacco will kill as many as one billion people this century, making it the greatest single source of preventable death and disease.

As an organization, Vital Strategies helps to design policies with the government and tries to help pass laws and campaigns for example the campaign like no smoking at public places that would help prevent people from smoking. Another example is the campaign that restricted smoking in-front of children as well as inside cars.

Their target audience is not individual smokers. With the government of Norway, Australia, Vital Strategies was able to increase the price and taxes on cigarettes and create a smoke-free policy the would make it difficult for people to buy cigarettes and non glamourize the same by banning advertisements. The price was increased from 18$ to 25$ for a pack.

2.2 Online surveys and smoking alternatives

From the response gathered out of campaigns and social media strategies and surveys, it was concluded that people are looking for solutions apart from the existing ones. They are actively seeking options that could help them distract their mind when they have the urge to smoke.

The alternatives to smoking a cigarette give the same simulation of that an actual one while requiring the same effort and time. These options have been established to be less harmful than cigarettes because they contain only Nicotine and no Tobacco, however, they are causing harm too if not more. As many people are dying because of smoking, it is instilling a sense of awareness in present smokers which is leading them to try out existing solutions for quitting, for instance, Nicotine patches, chewing gums, and some mobile applications.

2.2 Pavlok

Pavlok is a behavior training device. It is a smart wearable device that breaks bad habits. It vibrates to reward you for good behavior and administers an electric stimulus to train away bad behavior. It connects to its accompanying iOS and Android mobile application.

3 Proposed Solution

Since every person is different and so are his or her habits, there is no one such solution that will fit everyone. This has many reasons, like different motivation levels, addiction and consumption routine, and varying lifestyle habits.

Some people are inclined towards physical fitness and can see the repercussions of smoking on their body which is the motivation for them. While in some cases it is the recommendation of the doctor for them to quit smoking. In the case of females, pregnancy is one of the major reasons.

Keeping these audience sets into consideration, the following solutions have been prepared.

3.1 Stress Release Kit

This is an instant and easy to use stress release kit. From research, it has been deduced that most people reach out for a cigarette or actually have an urge to smoke the most when they are experiencing a high-pressure situation. In moments like these if the attention of the smoker can be drawn to some other activity which also serves as a purpose to release stress, a lot of smoking conversion points can be dropped.

The kit consists of five items, each chosen to serve different situations. The details about these elements is as follows:

3.1.1 Water Game

Most people have already played the water game sometime during their childhood. The great thing about this game is that is still deemed appropriate for anyone to play and brings forward the competitive side. Once a person indulges in playing the water game, it has the capability to distract for a good course of time and that is exactly what is needed at the time when urge of smoking hits.

3.1.2 Needle And Thread

The idea is to pass the thread through the need. This is a task that requires a lot of concentration as well as brings satisfaction. This follows the similar principle of taking the focus of the smoker to another mental zone and cope up from the maximum urge.

3.1.3 Audio Lighter

The essential thing required for smoking other than a cigarette is lighter. This solution presents an audio lighter that will play pre-recorded messages of the smoker’s loved ones. The motive is to remind them of their family and friends and what consequences will the habit of smoking will have to them as well. As an extended prototype, the audio lighter could play simulations along with voice messages.

3.1.4 Wrist-band

This prototype involves a wrist band that uses electrophysiology or alternatively muscle simulation to study the hand pattern of a smoker and deduct the same.

The band will be accompanied by a mobile application that will serve as a community to connect people who are on the same journey of quitting smoking. The application will track their progress, show statistics around the same as well as motivate the user towards the goal by sharing other success stories, quotes and tips.

As a future scope, the band and application will connect to the audio lighter mentioned above to track the smoking behavior of the person. Audio lighter will have motivational quotes that can be set from the application as well as share updates on the progress with friends and family.

The application will come with a toggle feature that will disable the mobile phone of the user for usage for set amount of time every time he or she exceeds the consumption of cigarettes as a punishment mechanism.

4 Conclusion

This research paper intends to throw some more light on how bad smoking is for one’s health and its consequences. For those who are willing to quit this habit, there are people out there to help as well as a variety of solutions to achieve the same. The proposed solutions are designed for those who are self-aware and wish to help themselves.