“Any of them can quit anytime they want to with no problem.”
That’s right, just like what Mark Twain said about tobacco. ‘quitting smoking is easy, I’ve done it many times”.
Mark didn’t try hard enough.
I quit smoking when I was 25 and never went back. It took three days and one box of nicorette gum before I realized that I would be successful in this endeavor.
The reason it was not hard is because I really WANTED to be free of cigarette smoking. As a two pack a day chain smoker, I had grown really very damn tired of suffocating in smoke all day long. Tired of standing in line to buy cigarettes every day, tired of paying a 1.89 for a pack of Marlboro lights, and oh boy are they so outrageously expensive today!
I would classify cigs as a mildly physically addictive substance, but I think the reason most people continue to smoke is because they enjoy the physical act of smoking itself. As soon as they decide that they no longer enjoy that act, they will likely move to quit.