Ban sends smokers to clinics for help quitting

WITH smoking now banned in the city in indoor public places, the number of smokers turning to clinics to kick the habit has doubled, health officials said yesterday.

At Ruijin Hospital, where a weekly clinic has been running since 2005, 15 patients visited yesterday — 10 of them first-timers.

Doctors said normal attendance was about 6.

One of the first-timers was a 48-year-old man surnamed Zhan, a renovation worker.

“Some indoor places, such as office buildings, once had smoking corners, but now we’ll have to go all the way downstairs to smoke, which is very inconvenient,” said Zhan.

He said he smokes “a little more than one pack” a day, which means at least 20.

Zhan said he came to the clinic because he was convinced that he could never quit on his own.

“I tried once 10 years ago and after three days without a cigarette I surrendered,” he said.

“I couldn’t help feeling my pocket from time to time as if there were cigarettes there. And the problem for me has always been that most of my co-workers smoke.”

Zhan said he hopes to set an example to his co-workers by successfully quitting, which he says is not impossible.

Dai Ranran, the doctor treating Zhan, prescribed him a month’s supply of the stop-smoking drug varenicline, used to treat nicotine addiction. The doctor also added him to a WeChat group of doctors at the clinic and patients.

Dai said statistics show that only 3 percent of smokers can quit smoking without medical help — not smoking a cigarette within 12 months.

“Many patients came to us when they developed diseases as a consequence of smoking, but more and more of our new patients these days come saying they wanted to quit before it’s too late,” she said.

At Zhongshan Hospital, doctors told Shanghai Daily more than 20 patients have come to their quit smoking clinic every Thursday afternoon in the past month, up from the normal average of about 12.

Wang Xiaodan, a doctor at the clinic, recalled a patient who came to her the second day after the new ban took effect.

The patient said he works at the data center of a telecom company and has been smoking two packs a day for over 30 years.

“He said he tried to stop smoking from 8pm the previous evening but quickly gave up,” she said.