Australia - banning cigarette sales in pubs and clubs may help smokers quit..

September 7, 2009 - Cigarette sales should be banned from pubs and clubs, say anti-smoking campaigners, who point to the results of world-first research carried out in Sydney. The combination of being in the company of smokers at a venue where tobacco is also for sale softens the resolve of would-be quitters and can turn a one-off cigarette into a full-blown relapse, a study has found.

Wendy Oakes, tobacco control manager for the Cancer Council NSW, which funded the research, said long-term smokers would not be disadvantaged if cigarettes were removed from sale in licensed premises. "Smokers have very habitual buying patterns. Smokers don't run out of cigarettes," she said. Such a move would instead "support people to keep the resolve they've already made … not constantly harassing people and tempting them" as they tried to quit.

The new results revealed "a very strong association amongst people who said they had quit between having a cigarette and buying a pack of cigarettes", Ms Oakes said.

Outdoor smoking areas in otherwise smoke-free pubs meant people "clustered there in social groups [allowing] people to continue to smoke in very socialised ways", and borrowing a cigarette from a friend could quickly lead to a purchase.

Cigarette machines in pubs may be operated only by token and only by a staff member, but this might not be enough to break the nexus, Ms Oakes said. "We would like to see vending machines removed from pubs and clubs because the work done shows that it is a trigger area," she said.

In world-first research, Suzan Burton from the Macquarie Graduate School of Management asked smokers intending to quit to record their smoking and cigarette purchases in a diary over four days. She found they were much more likely than non-quitting smokers to buy them at bottle shops and bars rather than supermarkets, suggesting impulse buying.

Their smoking was disproportionately influenced by the presence of other smokers. If family or friends smoked around them, they were three times as likely to light up.

"Allowing cigarettes to be sold in pubs is allowing people to be targeted at their most vulnerable," said Associate Professor Burton, a consumer behaviour expert who conducted the study with colleague Lindie Clark.

Tobacco availability seemed to conspire with alcohol and relaxation to knock people off the wagon and stopping such sales "might be a relatively efficient method of preventing relapse".

The study is the first to track the behaviour of people as they try to give up smoking, letting the researchers see how consumption aligned with cigarette availability and social behaviour. Previous research has been based on quitters' retrospective recollections, which are notoriously unreliable.

Most smokers say they would prefer not to smoke. About half make a quit attempt in any six-month period.

Reference: Pub cigarette sales under fire, JULIE ROBOTHAM,
The Sydney Morning Herald,September 6, 2009.