Table 6 Participants perceptions of smoking cessation therapies

Nicotine Replacement Therapy

'I went to the doctors and said, "I want to pack it up", she was looking through the book, says "you can't have the patches, you can't have the chewing gum, you can't have this .." I said "how the hell am I going to stop?".'

'I've heard a few things about the patches, I've heard that they're not much good.'

'About a week I tried, I tried them patches, the inhalers and the chewing gum, but it's the cost of them really, I would have carried it on if it weren't for the cost.'

'For £20, once you've opened it and used it that's it.'

'Cheaper to buy a packet of fags.'

'They're looking at it this way, if you can afford to smoke, you can afford to buy the patches and that's the wrong attitude because blow that for a lark, I'm not paying that sort of money to give up something that I want to do.'

'....they need to find something .....that is actually is as strong as the nicotine in cigarettes, if someone can find another fix that's as strong as the one we're already getting, then that will work.'

Bupropion

'I think if it hadn't have been for that outcry about the Zyban, I might have carried on with it but I just left it and that was it.'

'I don't know, if they want me to try that Zyban or something then I'd be a bit scared to take them as well, people have died from taking them or connected to it.'

'I've heard it's got bad side effects ...Someone had strokes on it.'

Complementary therapies

'I had a friend of mine and he used to smoke 40 a day, he went on that hypnosis, and from that day on he never smoked a cigarette.'

'I'd like something like hypnosis or anything to make you forget that you're addicted to it ...'