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Parent Category: Upper-Intermediate News Lessons

Category: Health Lessons

Written by Chris Cotter

Anyone who has attempted to quit smoking understands the difficulties and challenges it took to succeed. This is especially true if the person decided to quit cold turkey. There is a lot of advice about how to quit smoking, ranging from nicotine gum or nicotine patches to counseling sessions and hypnotherapy. But statistics show that only 3-5% of people who rely on willpower succeed, which is a terribly low number. In addition, only 50% of people who try to quit will succeed, so most smokers must try several times to give up the habit.

At General Electric, though, a more successful program will be implemented next year. The program plans to pay $750 to smokers who successfully quit. Furthermore, the company anticipates that it will save as much as $50 million per year because of decreased health costs. In other words, fewer smokers will mean healthier workers at GE.

The program first began as an experiment several years ago. About half of the study's participants received increasingly greater and greater payments for each month they remained free of tobacco. After one year, 15% of this group had successfully kicked the habit. This may sound like quite a small figure, but it was three times the success rate of the group which used more orthodoxmethods. The other group in the study followed GE's more commonly recommended system. They were simply encouraged to seek counseling and use anti-smoking drugs.

The program is not without controversy. Some participants cited willpower as a key factor, as well as outside factors like the desire to live longer and healthier lives for children and grandchildren. Dr. Normal Edelman, chief medical officer of the American Lung Association, also questioned paying people to quit. Yet he lauded the 15% success rate of the program.