Results of a new study show that cash offers to smokers to quit their bad and unhealthy habit proves quite helpful for many people to 
give up smoking.
In this study, a group of General Electric Co. workers around the country was included and they were offered even more than $750 to quit smoking. After one year the researchers found that among those employees who were offered cash to give up smoking nearly 14.7% in this group were found smoke-free, while those who were not paid for it had the unhealthy habit still. The study has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Feb. 12 issue.
Dr. Kevin Volpp, the lead author of the study, says about it, “Incentives and other cash offers prove quite helpful to change people behaviors towards health, and such offers may prove even effective in those who couldn’t succeed using some other sort of approaches in the past.”
Though they were only 15% who stopped smoking for a longer term because of money offers, the success rates are quite higher than usually have been noticed in some other smoking cessation efforts.
According to Thomas Glynn, who is director of cancer science and trends for the American Cancer Society, “Every year nearly 2 to 3 % smokers succeed to get rid of this unhealthy habit.”
