I convinced myself to quit.
I’ve encouraged my ex-wife to quit but she does plenty of stuff she shouldn’t and it’s no longer my concern.
Yes.
There was a woman who worked for me who was intelligent and beautiful, but she smoked.
I told her she was too smart and pretty to smoke, and she said “I’ll be a bitch if I try to quit,” to which I replied - “You’re always a bitch!”
She quit.
This is exactly my observation. Growing up, I knew someone who’d walk a half mile at night to a movie theater & buy a ticket just so she could get 2 packs at the concession stand.
(The stores were closed & there was no car available. Think ‘Mad Men’ and you’ll get the era.)
The same person seemed content later in life to have tumor after tumor carved off of her bladder. Well, not really. She’d scream in agony & swear off smoking. Six months later, more smoking… and a few months after that another bladder tumor.
Eventually, she really stopped… and the tumors stopped. She thought that it was quite a lucky coincidence.
She died horribly years later of emphysema. It took me a long time… but I can honestly say that there is Absolutely Nothing Else that I could have done to prevent that or to save her.
Nothing.
You just helped me relive memories of her. Thank You! 
One of my friends developed lung cancer 25 years after he stopped smoking. It was very sad.
Anyway, I tried to get my bro to stop. I’m asthmatic, he isn’t. “You know, if my lungs worked right, I wouldn’t be huffing smoke into them.” apparently isn’t a good way to convince someone.
And when I was 8 or 9 I flushed my dad’s cigarettes down the toilet. That got me a talking-to!
fist-bump
You know, my “talking to” was when I cut off the heads to every match in every book of matches in the house. Sure, it took a while, but to me she was worth it.
“THAT one was from Europe…!”
“Then why was it half empty from lighting cigarettes?”
SMACK!
Yeah, I was talking about my Mom. She smoked. She’s dead now. This won’t bring her back.
My dad would often send us to the drugstore with money for cigarettes. Once we tried to refuse, but the threat of withholding our allowances defused our rebellion.
I haven’t, but my grandfather convinced me.
He was a lifetime smoker. I saw him have three heart attacks, get pneumonia in the hospital after a heart attack, develop lung cancer and recover from it. I think he quit smoking after the second heart attack. It didn’t faze me, I still smoked, but never around him.
Finally one day we were headed out to the woods and I plucked up the courage to light up a cigarette in front of him. He turned and looked at me with the saddest expression on his face and said, with a tender tone of love, “You’ve seen what those things did to me, you must be a real idiot.”
I bought the patches the next week.
My husband, before we were married. I don’t know if it was my words or watching my dad get weaker and weaker from emphysema and lung cancer, but my then fiance quit.
I could not get my dad, mom, brother, or sister to quit, though, and only my brother is left.
Well, yes, but then it has long been part of my job. In the 1990s when patches were prescription I wrote an intermediate Stop Smoking program- between the AHA 3 day and the hospital based 3 monther. It was cheaper than either. Probably got 3 women to stop permanently.
Nowadays it’s an every visit reminder for smokers. It’s been found that having a health care provider reinforce the idea of quitting is actually valuable…
By criteria, I’m a nonsmoker, having had <100 cigarettes in my life. I only inhaled a couple…the rest were to look cool. One of those 18 year old rebellious things that backfired and made me sick ;).
No. Never. When I was in high school I steered clear of smokers. One girl told me she smoked and I never spoke to her again, for the rest of the school year.
With my parents and older brother it was different. Our parents had told us years before that they were hooked on smoking. It was clear to me that I couldn’t do anything about it–or with my older brother, who has never listened to me.
But my Mom once came home in tears after a biopsy showed she had breast cancer. She had to have a mastectomy–and the surgeon had told her frankly that there was a chance she might not survive the operation. Well, she did–and has been a cancer survivor for 27 years. 
Only if you count when I was a kid, and my grandmother gave up smoking for me. I remember not liking it when she smoked, but I don’t remember if I ever actually asked her, or if she was just worried about me breathing in second hand smoke.
I can’t even convince someone to stop smoking in the kitchen.
Can one appeal to the money aspects?
For example, lets say it cost $5 for a pack and you smoke a pack a day. You take that money, put it in a bank, at the end of the week you have $35. At the end of the year $1820. Take, that, put it in a mutual fund and watch it gain 10% interest.
My Father.
Our old dog died named Patches and he wanted a new dog. My mother didn’t want a new dog and father hounded her until she caved in, but with one caveat: He had to quit smoking.
He went on the store brand nicotine patch system and finally quit smoking in June. He was a smoker since his early teens and he is now 64 years old.
We adopted a min pin from Craigslist for a low fee. Lucy is a sweetheart
I grew up in a house where both of my parents smoked, and had since they were teenagers. When I was in college, my brother and I convinced both of them to quit. There were in their 40’s. My dad quit cold turkey. It took my mom about 2-3 years to fully quit. They have both been smoke free for about 25 years now. Hopefully it has added some years to their lives.
My wife back in the '70s. She was a nurse and knew about the dangers of smoking, but did so anyway. So did most of her coworkers back then. She mentioned that she wanted to stop smoking so I assisted her by doing things like destroying packs of cigarettes; swiping lighters and matches; removing the lighter in the cars; and commenting on how badly she and her clothing smelled. I was a real pain in the ass about it. I’d also have her go on long bicycle rides with me and mentioned, over and over, that she’d be faster and not cough so much if she quit smoking.
Of course she said that she wanted to quit smoking first, but I sure did help.
Unfortunately, no- as a kid, I tried hard to get my parents to quit, but my Dad died just shy of his 39th birthday, still smoking 3 packs a day.
My Mom learned to hide her tracks, and smoked only when she was pretty sure we kids weren’t around. But she never really quit, and still sneaks an occasional smoke to this day.
No, but eventually COPD was able to get done what I couldn’t do.
Kind-of, and yes, but unexpectedly.
Kind of: when I was young, I used to sneak my one uncle’s packs of cigarettes away and put those novelty cigarette “loads” into them. He could usually detect the tampered ones, and would break them. But he told us on this one drive back to the base (he was in the service and used to visit us on weekends), he was getting groggy on the drive, and fired up one of the loaded cigs he hadn’t found. Almost killed him when the load fired. He weaved all over the freeway, and there was tobacco floating all over the inside of his car ! He told us later that he creditted that incident as starting his decision to quit.
Yes, unexpectedly:
All 3 of my girlfriend’s brothers smoke (like chimneys). Even after their mom had part of her lung removed (she had been a longtime smoker as well), none of them would quit. They would try for a bit, but after a couple months they would slide back.
After running out of ideas, I started reading about e-cigs. So I decided on a different tact: if we can’t get them to quit, maybe we can get them to vape as at least they won’t be inhaling all the other bad crap in burning tobacco. So we got all 3 brothers these kits and the vaping liquids. 2 of them tried them and gave them a good shot. One just didn’t like it from the get go.
Of the 2 who tried, one first started cutting back on real cigarettes. Then cutting back on the amount of nicotine in the vaping liquid. And then…stopped altogether ! We were amazed ! He’s now gone like 7 months without a cigarette, and close to 2 months without vaping. We were hoping they’d just stop actual smoking, but are so pleased he’s quit all together.
Sigh. Same here. My little sister smoked until two years ago when she had a sudden and terrifying incident where she couldn’t breathe, and was subsequently diagnosed with COPD. Plus heart problems. She quit immediately, but the damage is done. She occasionally needs oxygen, she has to be very careful to avoid any airborne toxins or allergens and even severe heat. Her life span will be limited by this disease.
I’m so angry at myself for never trying to get her to quit. I just felt - and I was probably right - that any suggestions would be met with resistance. But now I look back and think that I could have said something.