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Therapeutics Letter 21 considers a clinician-based approach to helping patients quit smoking. Conclusions: The challenge for health care professionals is to organize medical care so that the smoking status of all patients is identified and followed-up; motivate smokers to stop and youth to avoid the addiction; offer to the smokers who are ready to quit behavioural and pharmacological treatment, and follow-up. The benefit is that 8-12% of the clinician's smoking patients will stop smoking annually, rather than the 4-6% who stop with no intervention (absolute increase 6%, number needed to treat to benefit one patient, 17 per year). The long-term, cumulative impact of physician-based tobacco intervention on smoking prevalence makes it one of the leading options in tobacco control.