Smoking Control/Cessation Solution

The environmental and social problems related to smoking are extensive: air pollution, child labor, land use, forest destruction and litter estimated in the trillions of cigarette butts worldwide annually.

The Environmental Protection Agency* says toxic chemicals leached from discarded cigarette butts present a biohazard.

Smoking also kills more people every year than AIDS, alcohol, drug abuse, car crashes, murders, suicides, and fires combined. Workplace smoking costs companies billions of dollars in lost productivity and increased health costs. In the United States alone, health care expenditures caused by smoking exceed $193 billion annually according to the Center for Disease Control.

A report** in Reuter’s News on October 31, 2011 says companies will now penalize workers who smoke in 2012 according to an October survey by consulting firm Towers Watson and the National Business Group on Health.

The penalties include higher premiums and deductibles for individuals who failed to participate in health management activities as well as those who engaged in risky health behaviors such as smoking. "Nothing else has worked to control health trends," says LuAnn Heinen, vice president of the National Business Group on Health, which represents large employers on health and benefits issues. "A financial incentive reduces that procrastination."

To help address both the environmental and social problem, GEP will re-introduce a failure-free, self-help smoking control/cessation solution to businesses and individual smokers. This proven solution helps anyone reduce and eventually successfully quit smoking.

GEP’s smoking control solution has proven its success over the past twenty years with individuals, organizations and Fortune 500 companies including Boeing, GE, Canon, P&G, IBM and Sony. Over 4,000 workplaces have benefited and more than 100,000 smokers.

GEP is developing a software application for its smoking control solution which will first be marketed to large corporations and will then use online marketing strategies to spread the word to individuals and drive sales worldwide.

The major benefit consulting firms, many of whom are very familiar with GEP’s smoking control solution, will be the way to re-introduce it to the Fortune 500 in the US and Canada.

GEP’s goal is to have one million people successfully use its smoking control solution.

* http://www.gallup.com/poll/28432/smoking-rates-around- world-how-americans-compare.aspx

** http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/31/us-penalties-newspro-idUSTRE79U3CB20111031