Does Stoptober Work? What the Evidence Shows

Quick answer: Stoptober measurably increased the number of people trying to quit in England, but not evenly. The effect was large in 2012 and 2015 and small in 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2017, and it appears to have been bigger when the campaign's budget was bigger. Whether those extra quit attempts became lasting quits has not been established by either published evaluation.

This is one of the few public health campaigns with real independent evaluation attached to it, which makes it possible to answer the question honestly rather than by press release. Two studies do most of the work.

The First Campaign: 2012

The launch year was evaluated by Brown and colleagues, published in Drug and Alcohol Dependence in 2014, using England's monthly household surveys of smokers.

What they found: in October 2012, 9.6% of smokers reported a quit attempt in the past month, against 6.6% in the other months of that year — roughly a 50% increase. Compared with October in the years 2007–2011, the odds of an October quit attempt in 2012 were higher, with an odds ratio of 1.79 (95% CI 1.20–2.68).

Scaled to the population, the authors estimated the campaign produced in the region of 350,000 additional quit attempts. Their cost-effectiveness estimate for the modal 35–44 age group was an incremental cost of about £414 per discounted life-year gained, which is inexpensive as public health interventions go.

That is a genuinely strong result for a media campaign, and it is why the format was copied by other countries.

The Six Years After: 2012–2017

The more informative study is the follow-up by Kuipers and colleagues, published in Nicotine & Tobacco Research in 2020. It used 51,399 adult smokers and ex-smokers across 132 monthly surveys in England covering 2007 to 2017 — so it could compare Stoptober years against pre-Stoptober years, and each campaign against the others.

Three findings, in the order they matter:

1. Across 2012–2017 there was an October effect, and before 2012 there was not. October quit attempts versus other months gave an odds ratio of 1.24 (95% CI 1.00–1.53) in the campaign years, against 0.95 (95% CI 0.76–1.18) in 2007–2011. The lower bound sitting exactly on 1.00 is worth noticing: this is a real but modest signal, not an overwhelming one.

2. It was not consistent from year to year. The October difference was large in 2012 (odds ratio 1.92, 95% CI 1.23–2.98) and again in 2015 (1.84, 95% CI 1.14–2.95), and small in 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2017. Across those six years, October quit attempts ranged from 3.1% to 8.5%.

3. Budget appears to explain part of the difference. Comparing the higher-budget campaigns of 2012–2015 with the lower-budget ones of 2016–2017 supported an interaction with spend, though the authors described the data as somewhat insensitive on that point. A campaign nobody sees does less.

What Nobody Has Measured: The Success Rate

This is the part most write-ups skip, and it is the honest centre of the question.

Both evaluations measured quit attempts — how many people tried. Neither measured how many of those attempts turned into people who were still not smoking a year later. The authors of the six-year study say so themselves, listing as future work the need to clarify how the increased quit attempts translate into quit success.

So: there is no published Stoptober success rate, and we are not going to invent one. If you see a figure quoted as "the Stoptober success rate", it is almost certainly either the campaign's 28-day message repeated as though it were an outcome, or a number from something else entirely.

The 28-Day Claim, Read Properly

The campaign's own headline message is that people are five times more likely to quit for good if they can make it to at least 28 days smoke-free.

Read literally, that is a statement about people who reach 28 days — and they are not a random sample. They are the people whose attempt was already going well: better prepared, better supported, less severe dependence, or simply luckier in what October threw at them. The comparison is between people who got four weeks in and people who did not, so it describes where they ended up, not what the campaign did to them.

It is a good motivational message and a poor causal claim. The defensible version is the plain one: relapse risk is at its highest early and falls as the weeks accumulate, so a month is a sensible thing to aim at. The withdrawal timeline is what is actually underneath it.

Is Stoptober Still Running?

Yes. It has run every October since 2012 and continues to run, which is a longer unbroken record than most public health campaigns manage. The branding and the annual theme change from year to year; the ask does not.

So Should You Do It?

The evidence supports a narrow, real claim: a national campaign with a fixed date and a bounded target gets more people to try, in years when it is funded enough to be noticed. That is worth something, and it costs you nothing.

What it does not do is replace the things with the strongest evidence behind them. Medication roughly doubles the odds of a quit attempt succeeding, and behavioural support adds to that again — see quit smoking tips that actually work, the nicotine replacement therapy guide, and prescription medications to quit smoking. The most useful way to treat Stoptober is as the date on which you start doing those, with company.

Practical detail on the dates and the free support is in our Stoptober guide.

References

1. Brown J, Kotz D, Michie S, Stapleton J, Walmsley M, West R. "How effective and cost-effective was the national mass media smoking cessation campaign 'Stoptober'?" Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 2014;135:52–58. [2012 campaign: quit attempt rates, odds ratio, cost per life-year]
2. Kuipers MAG, West R, Beard EV, Brown J. "Impact of the 'Stoptober' smoking cessation campaign in England from 2012 to 2017: a quasi-experimental repeat cross-sectional study." Nicotine & Tobacco Research, 2020;22(9):1453–1459. [Six-year evaluation: consistency between campaigns and the budget interaction]
3. Office for Health Improvement and Disparities. "Stoptober launches to give smokers the confidence to quit." GOV.UK, 24 September 2022. [The 28-day message, in the campaign's own wording]

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Stoptober actually work?

It increased the number of people attempting to quit in England, though not consistently. The launch year in 2012 showed quit attempts rising from 6.6% to 9.6%, and a six-year evaluation found a real but modest October effect overall, large in 2012 and 2015 and small in the other years. Neither study measured how many of those attempts became permanent quits.

What is the Stoptober success rate?

There is no published success rate. Both independent evaluations of the campaign measured quit attempts rather than long-term abstinence, and the authors of the later study named the gap themselves. Any specific success-rate figure attributed to Stoptober should be treated with suspicion.

Are you really five times more likely to quit if you reach 28 days?

That is the campaign's own message, and it describes an association rather than an effect. People who reach 28 days smoke-free do go on to stay stopped at much higher rates, but they are also the people whose attempt was already going well. Reaching 28 days is a good sign, not a mechanism.

Why did some Stoptober campaigns work better than others?

The six-year evaluation found the October effect was large in 2012 and 2015 and small in 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2017, and that the difference appeared to track the campaign's budget — bigger effects in the higher-spend years. The authors noted the data on that point were somewhat insensitive.

Is Stoptober still a thing?

Yes. It has run every October since 2012 and is still running, under the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities within the Department of Health and Social Care.

Is Stoptober better than just quitting on my own?

The campaign supplies a date, free support and the knowledge that other people started the same day. What it does not supply is medication or structured behavioural support, which are the two things with the strongest evidence behind them. Treating October as the start date for those, rather than as a substitute for them, is the approach the evidence favours.