Doctor, you're in tobacco sales!

Frederic Bass, MD, DSc

Canadian Medical Association Journal 1996; 154: 226-227


Frederic Bass is director of the British Columbia Medical Association's BC Doctors' Stop-Smoking Project.

Abstract

The director of British Columbia's Doctors' Stop-Smoking Project says that, whether they recognize it or not, doctors have the best and most competitive position within the tobacco industry because they have the best product line. Dr. Frederic Bass says physicians' products -- health and freedom from addiction -- will win against the competition, which can offer only smoke, addiction to nicotine and ill health. "We offer the better deal," he says, "but are we selling like we could? That's the issue."
Here's what the nicotine product line offers its customers: the very useful psychoactive effects of nicotine, plus nicotine addiction, a substantial loss of money, a loser's self-image, foul breath, chronic cough, slimy sputum, impaired immunity, dysfunctional reproductive organs, failing circulation, unnecessary complications of pregnancy and hospitalization for cancers and respiratory, cardiac and vascular diseases of various sorts.

We, on the other hand, can offer our customers fresher breath, freedom from the hourly stresses of nicotine withdrawal, better health, better control of life and savings totalling $1000 to $2000 a year. With persistence and the right approach, we can outsell them in all market segments -- young and old, female and male, blue collar and white collar.

When we don't sell, our competitors get the customers. Once youngsters begin daily smoking (at age 13, % 2 years), they are on the slippery slide into addiction. We often lose these customers for 20 to 30 years until maturity or disease brings them back to our product. Customers are captured by the tobacco industry during only a 15-year interval, from age 9 to 24. After that, people are usually too smart or too set in their ways to begin smoking.

So are you selling like you should? Do you know how to sell? Do you have the right approach? Do you have the necessary tools? Are you hearing your customers' subtle requests for the health side's product?

Maybe you feel that since you're not getting paid to help people stop smoking, there would be few benefits to you in helping smokers escape their addiction. But the most likely reason that you're not selling like you could is that you underestimate your effectiveness - the long-term influence of your advice to stop smoking, the motivating impact of asking a patient how she feels about stopping smoking, or the weight your words hold for the 12-year-old whose friends will offer him a smoke next week.

The Supreme Court of Prevention grants an A rating to the act of helping people escape smoking.1 However, most Canadian doctors are not yet marketing the whole package. Passing mention of tobacco at the patient's initial exam won't do. Neither will overselling cessation nor exhausting yourself! The truth is that most smokers aren't ready to make the commitment to quit -- not yet. What's needed from you is a consistent, empathetic and brief pitch to all smokers, then support and appropriate nicotine therapy for the relatively few patients who are ready to stop smoking.

We doctors don't realize our potential for selling at the societal level. We can encourage city councils to adopt smoking bylaws, hound ministers of health about tobacco taxes, make waves in the media about the myriad consequences of tobacco use and pester members of Parliament to regulate the country's foremost hazardous product. Every letter, every phone call and every direct contact with a politician is multiplied by 100 by the time its final impact is assessed.

How the nicotine industry performs its chicanery has been described by a former tobacco lobbyist, who is now dying of cancer of the tongue.2 His closing comment at the 8th Nicotine Conference in Toronto this October should inspire all of us: "Remember one thing: you [on the health side] are winning!"

Let's get out there and outsell the competition. We have a great product. Let's sell it!

References

  1. Canadian Task Force on the Periodic Health Examination: The Clinical Guide to Clinical Preventive Health Care, Ministry of Supply and Services Canada, Ottawa, 1994
  2. Skolnick AA: Cancer converts tobacco lobbyist: Victor L. Crawford goes on the record. JAMA 1995; 274: 199-202
See related articles:
Mobilizing physicians to conduct clinical intervention in tobacco use through a medical-association program: 5 years' experience in British Columbia
Yes, Minister, Canadians need strong tobacco-control legislation now!
Our acceptance of the status quo for smoking should be a source of national shame
Tough tobacco-control legislation begins to have an impact in Ontario
| CMAJ January 15, 1996 (vol 154, no 2) |