Lapsing Into Relapse

"One of the big things we study is relapse," Schelling says. "Everybody's got the word that smoking is bad, and all sorts of people are trying to quit. But if you do relapse, how do you recoup your morale and do it again? That's what we want to figure out."

To determine the relapse rate of quitting smokers, Schelling and his assistants, Jan L. Hitchcock, Nancy A. Rigotti and Andrea M. Berman, surveyed a sample of smokers in the Boston area.

"I called several hundred smokers to see if there are patterns with which people return to smoking if they have quit. Are there multiple attempts to quit? Do they just smoke on and off?" says Hitchcock, whose special interest is studying how smoking patterns have changed thoughout history.

"What we found was that there is substantial variation. The person's initial motivation to quit will determine the frequency with which they relapse. There is a complexity of problems--it's a very descriptive study," says Hitchcock, who used original as well as previously collected data to support her work.

Public Policy

Schelling says that the success of Cambridge's anti-smoking policy will lead to more states passing laws governing smoking, and he is now conducting policy studies at the K-School to prepare for such a trend.

"I belive we have been very influential on policy," he says. "A Kennedy School student did a study for the Massachusetts Commission on Health to see what to do in state areas [about smoking policy]. It went straight to [Gov. Michael S.] Dukakis, and now it has been implemented."

"We were also influential in keeping the 16 cent cigarrette tax the same and not cut back in half to eight cents," he says.

Schelling says the Institute will continue to shape policy as long as it maintains research activities and holds conferences to make congressmen and other policy makers informed of the advances in smoking policy.

"We are not a lobbying group," though, says Hitchcock. "We just want to show people what the options are in quitting. The general idea, except among the tobacco industry, is that smoking is bad for your health. We're trying to give people a wide range of topics."