A reflection on the growing interest in quitting smoking, the social, economic, and health factors behind it, and a personal journey through addiction, willpower, prayer, and change.
By Muchangke
By Muchangke
If a country could be said to have certain “national habits,” smoking would surely rank high on the list.
In China, cigarettes are more than a consumer product. They have long functioned as a kind of social language. Offering someone a cigarette can be a gesture of courtesy. Lighting one together can break the ice. At times, a person who does not smoke may even be seen as distant or unwilling to fit in.
China is also one of the world’s largest consumers of cigarettes. Over the years, an enormous system has grown around tobacco, reaching deep into the economy, social relationships, culture, and everyday life. It is not that people do not know smoking is harmful. Rather, many have come to accept it as part of ordinary life—like the air around them or background music that has been playing for so long that no one thinks to question it.
Recently, however, something seems to be changing.
Lately, I have noticed an interesting phenomenon.
On WeChat Moments, in group chats, and across short-video platforms, there seems to be a noticeable increase in content about quitting smoking.
Some people proudly post that they have been smoke-free for seven days, thirty days, or one hundred days.
Others talk about sleeping better and breathing more easily after quitting.
Some even livestream their “last cigarette,” treating it almost like a small farewell ceremony.
This is not a bad thing.
Whatever the motivation may be, deciding to quit smoking is good for one’s health and good for one’s family.
In fact, when a person quits smoking, the first people to benefit may not be the smoker alone, but those closest to him.
There is less choking smoke in the house. Children are exposed to less secondhand smoke. A spouse has one less reason to worry.
But one question remains:
Why now?
Major changes rarely begin with a single cause.
This time is no exception.
China’s tobacco industry operates under a state monopoly system.
Recently, online discussions about the income and benefits of employees within the tobacco system have created a striking sense of contrast.
On one side is the image of respectable, stable employment with relatively good income.
On the other are ordinary smokers carefully counting every expense while living under increasing economic pressure.
When someone begins to feel that the money he saves elsewhere is ultimately helping sustain a system that seems distant from his own life, the psychological contrast can be powerful enough to shake a habit formed over many years.
An even more immediate factor is price.
Many so-called “daily cigarettes”—the familiar, regular, relatively affordable brands people smoke every day—have become noticeably more expensive, while some premium cigarettes appear to have changed much less.
That can create a strong sense of unfairness.
The ordinary person’s daily choices keep getting squeezed, while symbolic or luxury consumption seems relatively untouched.
Sometimes health is not the first reason a person quits smoking.
Sometimes the wallet casts the first vote against cigarettes.
As costs rise, people naturally begin looking for alternatives:
homemade cigarettes, traditional loose tobacco, bulk tobacco, and sometimes even gray-market sources.
But at that point, smoking begins to feel like too much trouble.
When a habit is no longer convenient or effortless, a person may finally stop and ask a serious question:
Do I really need this?
Various experimental videos have also appeared online, raising questions about whether cigarettes contain substances that help them burn more easily.
Whether all of these experiments are scientifically rigorous is another question.
But at the very least, they have caused many people to look more carefully at what they inhale every day.
Once something that used to feel completely normal begins to create uncertainty, doubt has already taken root.
More and more medical information about the benefits of quitting smoking is being widely shared.
The message is encouraging: after a person quits, the body is not necessarily beyond recovery. Over time, health risks can decline, and the body can experience meaningful positive changes.
For many smokers, that offers hope.
It is not necessarily “too late.”
Instead, the message becomes:
It is still not too late to begin now.
The answer is simple:
Cigarettes are addictive.
And addiction is never merely a physical problem.
I know this from my own experience.
I learned to smoke when I was young.
At the time, it was not because I needed relief from stress.
I smoked because I wanted to look a little more mature.
It was a performance—the kind of thing a young person does while imagining that it makes him look confident and sophisticated.
Later, the problems gradually appeared:
bad breath, coughing, and excessive phlegm.
I knew I should quit, but I could not.
Cigarettes began to seem strangely “appealing.”
It was not really the taste.
It was psychological dependence.
Whenever I did not smoke, I felt as though something were missing.
When I saw someone else smoking, something inside me would immediately react.
It was almost like a conditioned reflex.
Later, I became a Christian.
After experiencing new life in Christ, I began to take quitting seriously.
And I did quit—for a while.
I went several months without smoking and even thought I had finally succeeded.
But when I returned to a familiar social environment, friends began offering me cigarettes again.
I refused several times.
My mouth was saying no, but somewhere inside, my heart was still saying yes.
Before long, I was smoking again.
That experience made one thing very clear to me:
By willpower alone, I could not win.
Later, in prayer, I chose a more honest path.
I stopped promising myself, “I will definitely overcome this.”
Instead, I admitted:
I cannot defeat this by myself.
I asked for help.
I was not simply asking for stronger self-discipline.
I was asking for something deeper—a change within me.
I prayed that I would begin to dislike cigarettes from the heart.
Then something remarkable happened.
Gradually, I became extremely sensitive to the smell of cigarette smoke.
It was no longer a matter of saying, “I can tolerate it.”
I genuinely found it unpleasant.
Sometimes the smell made me nauseous.
Even the old desire to smoke slowly disappeared.
It was not because I had suddenly become exceptionally strong.
The desire itself seemed to have been taken away.
Many people imagine quitting smoking as a head-on battle:
clenching their teeth every day,
forcing themselves to endure,
surviving by sheer willpower.
But for me, the real turning point was not trying harder.
It was learning to stop overestimating myself.
When a person stops pretending that he can handle everything on his own, change may finally begin.
If you are trying to quit smoking—
whether for your health, your finances, your family, or simply because you no longer want to be controlled by it—
that decision deserves respect.
Quitting does not have to begin with some grand declaration.
It can begin with one quiet decision:
Today, I will not light this cigarette.
The age of smoking may not disappear overnight.
But perhaps, little by little,
it is already beginning to leave the stage.
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