Highlights
- Increasing the rate of quit attempts is critical to increasing a population’s smoking cessation rate.
- The proportion of Ontario’s smokers who quit smoking and stay quit for at least 12 months is only 1.9%.
- Only 4 in 10 smokers in Ontario made 1 or more quit attempts in the past year; this rate has changed little over the past decade.
Recent research from the United States suggests that the strongest driver of a population’s cessation rate (i.e., the proportion of smokers who remain quit for at least 12 months) is the quit attempt rate, since most smokers quit on their own without assistance (i.e., medication and counselling) and most will need to make repeated attempts to quit before succeeding.[1][2] According to an estimate from the Ontario Tobacco Research Unit, Ontario’s smoking cessation rate has stayed the same at 1.9% for many years, making increasing the quit attempt rate a key goal for tobacco control efforts and critical to further reducing smoking in Ontario.
In Ontario, interest in quitting is high, with over half of smokers reporting intentions to quit in the next 6 months.[3] However, only 4 in 10 smokers in Ontario reported making 1 or more quit attempts in the past year and this rate has not changed in many years.[4] Among those who make attempts to quit, the frequency of making multiple attempts is even smaller.[5]
While treatments such as smoking cessation medications and counselling have been shown to increase quitting success, the high cost and low reach of these interventions means that they are unlikely to influence the provincial cessation rate. In Ontario, it is estimated that clinical treatment services funded under the Smoke-Free Ontario Strategy reach only about 5% of smokers.[3]
Encouraging smokers to quit with or without assistance is extremely important. An intervention as short as 3 minutes can help to promote quitting and boost quit rates.[6] Healthcare providers can also enhance their efforts by accessing additional resources, such as Ontario Health (Cancer Care Ontario)’s smoking cessation information for health care providers and by participating in local and by participating in local policy, program and educational efforts led by their local public health department.