There is a new advert for a particular brand of nicotine patch on British television at the moment. The advert shows a strikingly beautiful woman holding a cigarette in a series of Kodak moments, all in jazzy chiaroscuro. The cigarette then disappears from these sexy images, and the woman rides off on a motorcycle looking just as compelling as before. The voiceover then goes "Lose the smoke. Keep the fire."

Seeing this advert made me wonder whether these anti-smoking organisations are finally getting round to understanding the psychology of a smoker. And if so, that spells great news for all of us.

If you're a smoker, then deep down you know you want to stop the habit. You might not ever admit it -- and given today's culture of group persecution I wouldn't blame you -- but deep down you know. If you were to be offered the chance of literally waking up tomorrow a happy non-smoker with absolutely no desire for nicotine, then you would most likely take it.

The trouble is that the very groups charged with trying to help smokers quit (profit and non-profit) go about it entirely the wrong way. They fling scare tactics at smokers, telling them that cigarettes will kill them, and that they will cause impotence, or a slow and painful death. I hate to say it, but that's a no-brainer. And people continue to purchase cigarettes. Yet despite this obvious flaw, these organisations keep playing the same scaremongering tune.

As a former 40 a day smoker, let me cut to the chase on this one: people don't smoke for their health. They know it's crippling, they know it's fatal. People DO smoke for a whole truckload of other reasons. For some people it's the image. For some people it is the feeling of relaxation. For other people it is the sense of creative impetus. For some it's about coping with stress. For others, it's about dealing with boredom. Smoking is almost entirely a psychological fix.

This is why I was impressed with the latest advertising campaign. "Lose the smoke and keep the fire". Impressive. Instead of battering smokers with warnings over their impending deaths, the nicotine patch marketers have finally gone to the heart of the problem -- the psychological dependency. And in this instance, they are targeting the younger crowd, clearly trying to debunk the notion that you somehow lose cool points if you're not smoking. I daresay it's a drive to get 18 - 35 year olds off the habit before the smoking ban is implemented. It's a lucrative market, no doubt about that.

So where next? Well, if the marketers have truly grasped that smoking is a psychological addiction more than anything else, then the best thing they could do is offer some kind of free report with their product. Encourage smokers to stop, rather than treating them like vermin. Smokers are no different to any other member of society who has been brainwashed, except for the fact that the result of their brainwashing is a habit considered offensive to some. But the bottom line is that a smoker is as convinced they need a cigarette as much as a particular young lady may feel she needs the latest accessories in order to be a low-rent Paris Hilton.

Smokers need not be afraid of quitting the habit. The other side is beautiful, and the benefits are just too astounding that words cannot do them justice. The more we scare smokers, the more we push them away, the more we make them afraid to quit. Let's continue along this positive path of saying "Hey, it's alright...it's not so bad this side you know!"