Pharmacists, as easily accessible health-care professionals and advisors to the general public, are distributors of information and dispensers of health-care products. The "French Consensus Conference on Smoking Cessation” –(October 1998), summed up the aims of pharmacists in helping smoking cessation as follows: lead by example; enforce smoking bans in pharmacies; underline the significant risks linked to cigarette smoking; encourage non smoking; advise, aid and monitor the smoker who has decided to stop smoking. OBJECTIVE: To measure the progress of the French Pharmacist’s Smoking Cessation Program. METHODS: The STOP program, through a questionnaire distributed to approximately 2500 pharmacists, aims at describing the progress pharmacists are making with regard to their own tobacco dependence as well as in the public health initiative entrusted to them. RESULTS: Here we present the preliminary results of this investigation, through the analysis of the first 300 questionnaires. The average age of our sample population was 46 years, 55 % were male. 67% had attended a smoking cessation course. Ninety percent of these attended a course given by the pharmaceutical industry, and 7% attended a course given by an anti-smoking organization. 98% of the pharmacists that replied offered information on aiding smoking cessation, either through window displays(67%) or displays in the pharmacy (70 %). After delivering a nicotine substitute, 80% of pharmacists do not arrange a follow-up appointment. This lack of follow-up is explained on the part of the client by lack of motivation (48%) and clients not returning to the same pharmacy (34%). For the pharmacist the main reason is the absence of adequate follow-up tools (54%) CONCLUSION: Since the delisting of nicotine substitutes, pharmacists have played a major role in their delivery and should therefore play a strategic role in the fight against tobacco dependence.