Trying to quit smoking as part of New Year’s resolutions? Personalised phone counseling along with web-based guidance may help, according to a study. About one in five adults in the U.S. smokes, and about half of those who don’t quit will die from the habit, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which also estimates that smoking costs the economy $183 billion each year. Smokers who got phone calls from experienced counselors and took part in a web-based cessation program had nearly double the quit rates after 18 months of smokers who just used the web program, according to a study led by Amanda Graham, director for research development at the Schroeder Institute for Tobacco Research and Policy Studies at the American Legacy Foundation. “This is one of the few large trials that have looked at the internet and telephone counseling combined," Graham told Reuters Health in an interview about the study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. U.S. smoking rates have declined dramatically, from about 30 percent of the population in 1985, but most smokers still make multiple attempts before quitting successfully. Of all the people who try to quit without medication or counseling, fewer than 5 percent actually succeed, according to the National Cancer Institute. Telephone counseling has proved to be one of the more helpful interventions, the study authors noted, and many phone counseling programs now offer an internet component. The current study used QuitNet.com, a website established in 1995 that has more than 60,000 monthly users. While basic membership is free, the premium version is $99.95 a year. One of the study’s authors was a consultant to the site’s owner.