Approaching patients' smoking cessation as early as in community pharmacies. The 'CESAR' Program

Smoking is an epidemic that kills 7 million people around the world every year(1). According to the 2017 National Health Survey (NHIS) (2), 22.1  % of people over the age of 15 reports smoking every day and 2.3  % occasionally; whereas according to the 2012 NHIS (3), 24.0  % of the population reported smoking every day and 3.1  % occasionally; this implies a decrease of 1.9 percentage points in 5 years in daily smokers and 0.4  % in occasional smokers. According to a number of studies, approximately 70  % of smokers would like to quit, but less than 10  % reaches abstinence after one year and only 2  % succeeds if the patient has received no intervention (4). Additionally, according to data from the smoke-free campaign, promoted last year by SEFAC, 25.6  % of patients who wanted to quit smoking resorted to their pharmacist on their first attempt, 40  % on their second attempt, and 46.6  % on their third (5).