smoking occurs only after multiple years of abstinence.30 31 The worrisome observation that relapsers and new smokers are at even higher risk of future SRO than persistent smokers suggests particular targets for increased therapeutic attention. Finally, the data negated a reverse temporal relationship of SRO on smoking, as also seen in a study of adolescents.15 Instead, a reduction in risk for future smoking was observed among former and never-smokers with prior SRO in wave 1 compared with their counterparts without prior SRO. Perhaps among those former and never smokers, already inclined towards the pro-health behaviour of not currently smoking, was a subset spurred by the prior SRO to undertake further health-promoting and therapeutic actions, which immunised them against future smoking. Their counterparts who did not experience a prior SRO were less likely to be as self-protective or to seek counselling and similar treatments and were less immunised against resorting to new smoking. The serendipitous observation from the present sample that prior SRO and treatment seeking were well correlated (r=0.43, p=0.0001) is consistent with that conjecture.
