Below I am going to attach a response I composed several years ago to people who wrote me inquiring about pursuing careers in smoking cessation and also about getting trained by me to be able to do these programs. Since I wrote the original response here I retired from doing live programs, not having done any financially compensated work since 2009.

I basically moved my program into free video lessons at WhyQuit.com/joel. These lessons along with the articles I have written for clinics over the years are allowing me to reach more people with more information in every month than I was able to reach in over 30 years of doing live programs.

I think if you go through the day by day video lessons and read the materials you will have a thorough understanding of what can be done to help people to quit. You will in fact know more than most smoking cessation experts in the world who are in some way accredited for running smoking clinics. The problem is, if you list your knowledge or experience as being based on my lessons, you will most likely be summarily dismissed by most people in the public health community.

The Clinical Practice Guidelines that almost any credible organization are going to abide by are going to follow state of the art advice on smoking cessation and if you are ever going to try to work with such an organization or even have them as a referral source you are going to likely have to work within these guidelines. Almost everything I advocate though will fly in the face of the advice given in these quitting guidelines. A cornerstone of the guidelines is how almost all people should be provided quit smoking medication and aids. Here is my standard response page that have most of my articles and videos that address why I do not believe these guidelines are the best mechanisms for helping people to quit:

I occasionally get emails from people inquiring why I have such a critical view on the use of nicotine replacement products. Being that it takes time to personally answer all of these emails, I have assembled a series of articles that address different issues involving the use of nicotine replacement products for smoking cessation.

Here is a link to my page addressing these issues: Limitations of the use of nicotine replacement products.

Here is a general response I wrote in 2006 about working in this field. In a way I feel that prospects are even more dismal now for anyone wanting to provide programs that would really best help others wanting to quit:

"I occasionally get requests from people wanting advice on pursuing a career in smoking cessation. I am probably not the best person to offer advice on how to turn this work into a money making proposition. If I told you what I make annually from my work in the field you would likely find yourself writing me a check as a donation. Just for the record, I don't take any donations-I was just using the example to illustrate a case in point.

I left my 20 year full time job in a hospital based health promotion program over six years ago to just do my smoking cessation work independently. I basically went into this in a state of being semi-retired. Since I left the hospital I have just hit the six-figure mark of income for my smoking cessation work. That is if you combine all the money I was paid for all the work I did since I left the hospital six years ago. If you do the math I think you will see that I was never in it for the money.

I have never actually met anyone else who was really employed for any great length of time in true full time smoking cessation work. The only people who I have worked with in the past who did this as a full time job worked for the voluntary health agencies like the American Cancer Society or the American Lung Association. I am not sure that they even have these kinds of positions any more and if they did they are usually low paying organizations.

I would often get college students who would come interview me for ideas of working in the field of smoking cessation. I couldn't in all good conscience steer them to this work if they actually needed a steady income. There are times when money becomes available, like when the first state settlement monies were released and I had contact with a few people who took jobs in the field. I think all of them were phased out within two years as the money was slowly diverted to other areas. Also, when some of this money is made available it will almost never fund a cold turkey approach to cessation. Funders only seem to back programs that work with pharmaceutical interventions.

With this being said, I would like to say that the work is one of the most rewarding things you may ever do if you get involved with it. Just be sure to get and keep another paying day job or win a lottery."

Related videos:

• My work in the field of smoking prevention and cessation
• Why I no longer conduct stop smoking clinics
• "I liked my other support group more"
• How I started running quit smoking clinics
• Helping others quit
• Showing others that there is life without smoking
• Can you help a person who doesn't really want to quit smoking?
• Are people doomed to fail if they don't get professional help to quit smoking?

Related articles on how to help smokers to quit:

• "How can I get my family and friends to quit smoking?"
• Can we motivate a smoker to quit if he thinks he doesn't want to quit?
• Individual approaches used to motivate smokers to quit