In some states the legal smoking age is 18, in others it is 21. The simple and painless way to eliminate smoking forever is for the U.S. Congress to enact a law that forbids underage smokers ever to be able to legally purchase tobacco products. This eventually will reduce the smoking population to zero–painlessly since there will be no withdrawal symptoms by those who have never acquired the habit. For those who have acquired the habit, there is hope that they will be able to benefit from one or another of the cessation programs now in effect. I know from personal experience this is an exceedingly difficult goal to accomplish, since I had to quit five times before I found a way to actually do it, forever. My method was to reduce the number of smokes I took by one every two weeks until I was down to the final one that was te most difficult to give up. In my case, it was the smoke after dinner accompanied by a scotch and soda. The fortunate thing about this method is that I was able to disregard the pains of withdrawal from the intermediate steps knowing that I could have the one final smoke after dinner. And when I gave up that one, it was the only one that caused withdrawal symptoms and only during the hour or so after dinner. However, I did have to suffer those withdrawal symptoms for a full year before the problem went away. Completely in my case! They were replaced by an absolute repellance of anything at all to do with nicotine.