Go to a quit-smoking clinic, or call 12320 (China's public health hotline) to ask whether there is a quit-smoking service near you

Moderate value
Evidence A
Buys life
Costs a little
Takes some hours
Some willpower

In plain words

Medicine and having someone check in with you regularly are two different things, and together they work best. People who take medicine while a specialist follows up with them succeed at nearly twice the rate of people who get only a short piece of advice. Phone support counts too: a quit line that calls you back can raise the success rate by another 20% to 30%.

Cost: A clinic registration costs a few to a few dozen CNY. Behavioral support is usually 4 to 8 face-to-face sessions of half an hour to an hour each, mostly under 5 hours in all. The hotline is free.
What you get: Pooling 52 trials with 19488 people, the quit rate in the medicine-plus-behavioral-support group was 1.83 times that in the usual care or brief advice group (RR 1.83, 95% CI 1.68–1.98, the plausible range; high-quality evidence). In the 43 trials that recruited people in health care settings it was 1.97 times (1.79–2.18). Phone counseling taken alone: among people who had called a quit line themselves, those who received multiple proactive call-backs did about 38% better than those who got only materials or a single call (RR 1.38, 95% CI 1.19–1.61, 14 trials, 32484 people). Where people had not called a quit line and the researchers provided phone counseling, the gain was about 25% (RR 1.25, 95% CI 1.15–1.35, 65 trials, 41233 people). Both are moderate-certainty evidence.
Notes: How to find help in China: in WeChat, search for the China Quit-Smoking Platform (中国戒烟平台) mini-program, which lists quit lines and quit-smoking clinics in each area; or call 12320 to ask whether your area has a quit-smoking clinic. Most of the trials above were done abroad, and the intensity of service at quit-smoking clinics varies a lot from place to place, so treat the numbers as a direction only. For the medicines to pair with this, see §2.3 (quit-smoking medicines).
Evidence grade: A : Specific numbers from meta-analyses, large cohorts or randomized trials; for law and policy, the statute or official text.
Sources: Stead LF, Koilpillai P, Fanshawe TR, Lancaster T (2016). Combined pharmacotherapy and behavioural interventions for smoking cessation. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 3, CD008286. https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD008286.pub3
Matkin W, Ordóñez-Mena JM, Hartmann-Boyce J (2019). Telephone counselling for smoking cessation. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 5, CD002850. https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD002850.pub4
中国疾病预防控制中心 (2021). 「中国戒烟平台」微信小程序正式上线：「在健康中国行动控烟行动工作组指导下中国疾病预防控制中心和世界卫生组织驻华代表处联合制作了中国权威戒烟资源库『中国戒烟平台』微信小程序。小程序内容主要包括：戒烟热线、戒烟门诊详细信息，以及线上戒烟服务资源等」
同一站点页脚标注「健康咨询电话：12320」. https://www.chinacdc.cn/jkyj/yckz/gzdt/202203/t20220310_296389.html

Mentioned in

Translated from the Chinese original. Original book, section 2, tip 5. This section is about health and medicines. It is general information, not a substitute for a doctor’s diagnosis or prescription. Content may be out of date and rules differ by place. When you actually deal with an agency, a doctor or a court, follow what local officials, doctors and lawyers tell you. Disclaimer