Stop Puffing, Win a Prize: New Tactic in War on Smoking

Where there’s smoke, there are prizes.

That’s the tack of the San Diego chapter of the American Heart Assn., which is sponsoring a contest, the first in a major metropolitan area, that uses prizes to persuade an estimated 180,000 smokers in the county between 18 and 65 to kick the habit.

The average smoker tries to quit half a dozen times before he succeeds, national statistics show. The heart association hopes to short circuit the process with its giveaway.

Beginning next month, smokers who give up their cigarettes will be offered the chance to win prizes like a trip to Hawaii, free meals at restaurants or tickets to Padres baseball games.

Any smoker who signs up for the new program in January, quits tobacco by Valentine’s Day and refrains until at least April 19 will be eligible for a lottery. A second drawing will be held in July as additional rewards for those continuing to abstain.

The San Diego “Quit to Win” program represents the first time such a contest is being sponsored in a large urban area. The program is adapted from recent federal smoking studies that used the lure of prizes to attract people in scattered suburbs nationwide for a long-term research project. The San Diego program involves no organized research or government funds and depends on community businesses to donate the prizes.

“People who smoke know that their habit is dangerous and have tried to stop,” said John Elder, public health professor at San Diego State University and co-chairman of the heart association’s education committee. “So our effort is an extra incentive to get them to try and quit one more time.”

Elder said stop-smoking programs alone do not always wean heavy smokers from their habits permanently.

“Since the first statement (on the dangers of smoking) from the U.S. surgeon general in 1964, the percentage of people who smoke in the U.S. has been halved, from 60% to about 30%,” Elder said. That means those people who found quitting fairly easy have already done so, he said.

“So now any gimmick we can use to get at the harder-to-stop people is fair game,” Elder said. “We hope to have a public health impact by getting a reasonable number of people to try. But obviously this is one among an array of weapons to fight what we consider a drug addiction.”

Among those related weapons is the resolution passed this week by the American Medical Assn. calling for a “smoke-free” America by the year 2000 by banning all advertising and promotion of cigarettes and smokeless tobacco.

Elder’s committee estimated there are 180,000 smokers in San Diego County. The number is lower than the nationwide figure because Californians, who place a greater emphasis on health, generally consume less tobacco than do people elsewhere in the country, Elder said.

The heart association hopes to reach 15,000 smokers through its campaign and persuade 15% of them to sign up and quit.

“A 15% rate would be a tremendous success for a short-term effort, especially if repeated on a regular basis,” Elder said. “While a two-month, or even a six-month, quitting time (as a condition for a prize) may not be long term, you have to quit for a week first before you can look to quitting for a year or more.”

The heart association will distribute entry forms throughout the county at shopping centers, hospitals, work sites and schools. Smokers who sign up next month must have two witnesses--one a non-relative--to certify that they smoke. In April, before ex-smokers can mail in forms attesting to their abstinence, the two witnesses must certify that no cheating has taken place.

The mail-in forms will be used in the prize drawings, complete with bands and balloons, April 19 at the Santa Fe Depot downtown. The Hawaii vacation would be the biggest prize.

In addition, a simple breath test that detects the presence of carbon monoxide, a key ingredient of tobacco smoke, will be given to all contestants before they can claim their prizes.

“It’s a fairly good test, but, of course, it is not totally exact,” Elder said, admitting that a person could refrain from smoking for only several days and probably pass the test. “We are relying on the integrity of people who participate.”

Those who sign up next month will be given information about various quit-smoking programs throughout the county, although 95% of all who quit suffer through the withdrawal pangs on their own, Meg Terry, program coordinator said.

Terry is also operating a related children’s contest, in which any child younger than 18 who signs up an adult for the program will be eligible for a separate prize drawing. The adult does not have to complete the program successfully for the child to collect a prize, Terry said.

Elder added, “The ‘side-car’ contest is a way to include the family as a strategy, to get family pressure on a member perhaps to stop smoking.”