I think it's really important that smokers understand that smoking is not an addiction, it is a habit (but a very strongly enforced habit).
Habit's are things you do at the same time each day, you build various associations with specific times, situations and circumstances in the day, when you will automatically have a cigarette.
All habits are formed by repetition and association.
When you first started smoking you had one cigarette, then as time went by you smoked more and more.
When your unconscious mind sees you doing something consistently, it will realize that it must be important to you to continue doing this particular thing, so it will take over the responsibility of that action.
So what happens is that act then passes from the conscious part of your mind to the unconscious part.
In the unconscious part of your mind all of your habits are stored, in this part of your mind, there is no thought process required with regard to any of your habits, for example if you normally have a cigarette first thing in the morning, in the garden with a cup of tea or coffee, you don't make the tea or coffee and then suddenly think "I think I'll have a cigarette with my drink" you will just automatically pick up your packet and take one out and light it, without any conscious thought...
see if you can remember this tomorrow morning, see what happens.
If nicotine was addictive, then why don't patches work for everyone? If you believe that you are addicted to nicotine that means you believe that your body requires nicotine to function.
What most people don't realize is that your average 24hr patch (which is what most smokers try, as they don't want to wake up in the middle of the night and desperately want a cigarette - not that that would happen) contains more nicotine then 16 packets of Benson & Hedges Gold (as an example), please don't take my word for this, check it out, you'll be amazed.
When a smoker puts that patch on their arm, they're getting more nicotine into their bloodstream, in one go, then they have ever had in their life...
they are overdosing on the stuff, yet most smokers I have seen over the years tell me that even though they had that patch on, they still smoked their cigarettes.
Surely that would be the last thing they'd want to do? It's strange that if you 'Google' nicotine addiction, you'll read paper after paper written by some of the top medical minds on the planet, telling you that nicotine is a more addictive substance then heroin.
Well if that's the case, how do you explain the results of a survey featured in the New Scientist vol 136 issue 1845 - 31 October 92, Page 6 states: "Hypnosis is the most effective way of giving up smoking, according to the largest ever scientific comparison of ways of breaking the habit.
Willpower, it turns out, counts for very little" Frank Schmidt and research student Chockalingam Viswesvaran of the University of Iowa carried out a meta-analysis, statistically combining the results of more than 600 studies covering almost 72 000 people from America, Scandinavia and elsewhere in Europe, and from that study the above statement was their conclusion.
  It's simple...
it's because it is not an addiction; it's just a very strongly enforced habit.