For decades, there have been far more ex-smokers than smokers — an estimated 75% quit without any drugs or professional help. But smoking cessation is a mass global phenomenon which is serviced by multibillion-dollar industries (pharmaceutical and e-cigarette industries, as well as health professionals). These try to denigrate unassisted cessation and promote their products and services as essential to successful quitting.

This discourse promotes smoking cessation 'weapons of mass distraction' and the medicalisation of a process that, before these products were available, had a natural history where drugs and expertise were absent, yet many millions quit around the world. The book reviews the early history of quitting smoking, the rise of assisted quitting and the forces that have tried to undermine smokers' agency to stop.