Our cover story likens the effort to reduce sharps injuries to the decades-old public-health campaign against smoking. Here's the premise: It wasn't one thing that made the once-tasteful act of lighting up tobacco taboo (and in some cities illegal), but the unrelenting lobbying and legislating. Let's hope sharps safety doesn't take as long to snuff out as smoking: But as a recovering addict who's now five years tar- and nicotine-free, I can relate to the sticks affliction-cigarette addiction analogy. Raymond C. Sinclair, PhD, a senior scientist with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and lead author of "The Stops Sticks Campaign Wants You" on page 34, draws some interesting parallels.

• Stopping sticks will be a testament to your perseverance, just like stopping smoking. I was great at quitting cigarettes. I did it dozens of times. I wore a nicotine patch. I chewed nicotine gum. I paid $895 for acupuncture. I watched my father, a smoker for most of his life, die of lung cancer at age 54. I quit cold turkey for hours and days at a time, but I'd always relapse, either "rewarding" myself for suppressing my cravings or setting myself up to fail (what goes better with beer or booze than a smoke?). For me, one's too many and a thousand aren't enough. I truly thought I'd never kick the habit. My moment of grace came when my lungs seized up on the basketball court one day and my foolish pride got the better of me.

As you endeavor to reduce sharps injuries in your facility, you must fight for small, hard-to-measure changes. I've always liked this saying from Jacob A. Riis: "Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before." And this one, from Lucretius: "The drops of rain make a hole in the stone not by violence but by oft falling."

• Stopping sticks will be clear evidence that one message isn't nearly enough to sustain changed behaviors, just like stopping smoking. Dr. Sinclair and colleagues argue that you must launch a campaign that lasts for weeks and pelts your surgeons and staff with a flurry of messages from different media: posters, safety device demos, testimonials, giveaways. Who knows how many public service announcements and lectures from loved ones was I exposed to before I quit.
• Stopping sticks will be clear evidence that knowledge is often a poor predictor of behavior, just like stopping smoking. Who doesn't know that sticks and cigarettes are bad for you? At this point, no one, but that doesn't stop people from acting in ways that they know are wrong.