An Open Letter to Tony Blair from Allen Carr 27/11/06

An open letter to Tony Blair from Allen Carr 27/11/06

Allen Carr Park House 14 Pepys Road London SW20 8NH

Dear Tony Blair,

Earlier this year I was given 6-9 months to live and am concerned about my legacy. It occurs to me that you are in a very similar position. We can help each other.

In 1983 I went from chain-smoker to non-smoker without suffering withdrawal pangs. It took no willpower. I immediately enjoyed social occasions more and was better able to handle stress. I’ve never had the slightest desire to smoke since. Most importantly:

I realised I had discovered a method which can enable any smoker to quit easily, painlessly and permanently.

At the time I wrote to the Conservative government and the medical establishment offering to help address the number one killer disease: nicotine addiction. I was ignored as I lacked credibility.

Over 20 years later I have established my credibility. My books have sold over 10 million copies and I have a worldwide network of clinics where last year alone we treated over 45,000 smokers. The clinics provide a money back guarantee whereby smokers can reclaim their fee should they fail to quit for at least 3 months. Less than 10% find it necessary to reclaim their fee. Furthermore, published, independent, scientific studies conducted by eminent scientists and experts in the field of smoking cessation have found that the success rate after 12 months is over 53%. No other method has results approaching these.

In spite of repeated formal approaches throughout 2004, 2005, & 2006, your Government, Department of Health, NHS, ASH, and QUIT have all refused to even meet me – let alone show an interest in my method.

It costs the taxpayer more than £400 to treat a smoker at the NHS Quit Smoking Clinics which use nicotine products, according to ASH they achieve a success rate of 20% after 12 months; i.e. a FAILURErate of 80%. The fee at my clinics is £220 and if smokers don’t quit, it costs nothing.

I have not had the benefit of charitable donations, government funding or the vast wealth of the pharmaceutical industry to fund marketing campaigns. The success and fame of the method has been achieved through personal recommendations. I am now widely recognized as the world’s leading expert on helping smokers to quit for one reason alone:

MY METHOD WORKS

Your government still refuses to provide my method on the NHS. Its refusal even to evaluate the method was made through the “National Institute for Clinical Excellence” (NICE) presumably under the influence of the pharmaceutical industry which sells nicotine via so-called Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) – gums, patches, nasal sprays, inhalators, etc. NRT is a misnomer. Nicotine is not replaced, it is continued and there’s nothing therapeutic about that.

YOU CANNOT CURE NICOTINE ADDICTION BY SUPPLYING NICOTINE!

The difficulty in stopping smoking is not the physical withdrawal. It is the feeling of deprivation smokers suffer because they believe they are making a sacrifice. Pills, patches or potions cannot solve this problem. My method does.

Your government, aided by the medical establishment, the NHS, ASH and QUIT, under the powerful influence of the pharmaceutical industry, is pouring hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money each year into the pockets of the pharmaceutical companies which are, in effect, competing with the tobacco industry to supply the nicotine addicted market and perpetuate nicotine addiction.

THIS IS A NATIONAL SCANDAL

Smoking kills 50% of all smokers, currently over 5 million people a year. The World Health Organization predicts that this will rise to over 10 million by 2020.

Does that sound like the medical establishment have the situation under control?

The situation is out of control. Together we could ensure that Great Britain leads the world to a smoke-free future. What better legacy could we ask?

Yours sincerely,

Allen Carr