Smoking begins when tobacco is readily available and others smoke. It easily becomes something more than experimentation, as the symptoms of nicotine dependence can develop rapidly. The social and environmental cues to smoke, the personal perceptions of smoking and the physiological effects of nicotine create strong links that are difficult to break. Programmes should be put in place to help people to stop smoking, but these programmes cannot reach their potential for success if the wider social and environmental factors are not also changed through strengthened anti-tobacco social values and tobacco control legislation, as exemplified in the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.