The Statistics: Around 20% or 3 million adult Australians smoke. According to statistics, around 50% of smokers have made at least an attempt to quit in the last year. Conclusion... a lot of smokers are ready to quit and need encouragement and the support to do so.

Most ex-smokers (some 70%) quit unassisted. Our goal is to try redress the imbalance of information being disclosed by pharmaceutical companies and quit smoking helplines and to let smokers know that generally they do not need nicotine replacements or counselling to quit. That it is not as difficult as you may think or that the "experts" would have you believe.

Chapman MacKenzie, Uni of Sydney Paper on "Neglect of Unassisted Cessation"

After some investigation, we believe that smoking cessation services and products by pharmaceutical companies are geared more for getting profits ($1.4 billion in sales world wide). And quit smoking helplines are geared to retain their funding and to keep themselves in a job. As the paper above indicates, vested interests has led to a gap in information about unassisted quitting. We also think that there is far too much emphasis on the negative effects of smoking and not enough on support and the positive effects of quitting. We think it is time for a change, time for the Quitober Challenge.

We want to create a groundswell of employers supporting their staff
smokers that want to quit. The Quitober Challenge encourages more awareness
and stimulates smokers to quit, with their workmates, in the same way that they started,
through their social networks. Canada runs two such events with a groundswell of more than 46,000 smokers participating last year >>social proof

Our goal is to also create a transparent and cost efficient option for employers
to encourage their smoking staff to quit. That is both measurable and accountable,
with the emphasis more on the support for smokers to quit and is shared across their social networks. Our goal being to create a more empowering approach for smokers to quit.

Our long term goal is to be the premier quit smoking awareness campaign-month in
Australia and then the world with some 25,000 members participating in Australia within 5 years. To have 40% of our members quit for the month of Quitober and 50% of them to go on to quit for good (for longer than a year).

The Quitober Challenge is the solution that we are continuing to design to meet these goals.