Sir, we are repeatedly prompted to urge our patients to give up smoking and I have found a delightfully decorous way that seems to work which I would like to share with your readers.

Bludgeoning our patients with yet more scientific reasons to quit meets a fairly stony resistance as they have probably heard it all before. Instead of using that confrontational approach I tried working with them, and this gentler approach seems to be more effective.

I find that many patients who are trying to quit are smoking about 15 cigarettes per day and need a bit of help to cut down further. Reaching for 'just one more' from the packet is all too easy and so I have got my patients to visit local charity shops to buy themselves an old cigarette case (hopefully of a suitable style for them as the fabulous Fabergé ones are so difficult to find these days!). They then put that day's quota (eg 15 cigarettes) into the case and that has to last them for the day – no more sneaking another quick one in.

This helps them to eek out a bit more time between their fixes of nicotine as they know that they have a self-imposed, limited supply for the whole day. Also, the process of counting them into the case works in the same way as popping pills out of blister packs makes one realise exactly how many pills one is dispensing. If by the end of the day they find that they have one or more left over, they could even give themselves a sticker on some chart inside the kitchen cupboard.

The following week, they put one less cigarette into the case and so on until they have been able to wean themselves off the dreaded weed completely.

This method is proving to be quite successful and I commend it to your readers to try with their own patients. The charity shops then benefit again by the patient taking the now-redundant cigarette case back for resale!