Smokers may find redemption on mobile phones

For millions of smokers itching to quit, new Web-based technologies are promising to stand by you like a close friend through those dark days of stress and withdrawal. Internet sites and discussion forums, dedicated to kicking the nicotine habit, have been around for more than a decade.
Now they are following smokers to their mobile phones, social networks and anywhere else to remind them that it's not worth lighting up. "Immediacy is one of the most critical parts of the program," said Jodi Kopke, media director at Colorado's State Tobacco Education and Prevention Partnership (STEPP).
"For someone to say they smoke at 7 am, 12 pm and 3 pm and then to get a message right as they are about to get up and light up, that is so powerful."
Colorado's STEPP and Denver-based ad agency Cactus developed a message system on mobile phones with an Internet quit program. Initially aimed at high school students in Colorado, the state hopes to soon share its fledgling FixNixer program as a technique for all age groups and geographies.
QuitNet.com, one of the most established Web sites for quitting, is also considering more tailored messages to users of its site and a foray into mobile, while quit support groups are popping up on social networks MySpace and Facebook.
"That is the next wave, to really blend user-generated pieces of the Web site," said QuitNet vice president, Jim Purvis, referring to information provided by smokers who want to quit. QuitNet is owned by Healthways Inc.
"If we know you like to golf, for example, we'll put up pictures of people who are outdoors or playing golf," Purvis said. "The more a person comes back to the site, the more positively it is correlated that those people will be successful initially and able to maintain their quit."
While the rate of smoking in the United States has fallen significantly in the last four decades, tobacco use is cited as a cause of about 440,000 deaths every year.
Bans on lighting up in bars and restaurants, as well as ever-higher taxes on packs of cigarettes, have helped many people cut down or quit. But smokers who have tried say it takes a lot of support to get over the craving for nicotine, and many people who quit end up relapsing within the first year.