A lot of this impression about the difficulty of quitting smoking arose in the 1980s and 1990s. At the time, smoking was omnipresent and taken for granted. Nobody asked permission to light up any place. If you were a nonsmoker out with friends, you'd sometimes be left nearly alone by yourself when everyone went out to take a smoke break together. I never smoked, but I reckon that these social factors made it much, much more difficult to quit and to stay quit.
A critical mass was reached in the 2000s, though, and now the bulk of social pressure is on helping people quit and stay quit. Frequently it's the smoker who will be alone in the cold on their smoke break. & besides, we have effective smoking cessation drugs like Chantix (how my wife quit).
Back in the army you quickly realized that when taking a smoke break, the guy who didn't smoke was volunteered to fetch the truck or whatever. So you learned to smoke, to avoid extra duty.
A critical mass was reached in the 2000s, though, and now the bulk of social pressure is on helping people quit and stay quit. Frequently it's the smoker who will be alone in the cold on their smoke break. & besides, we have effective smoking cessation drugs like Chantix (how my wife quit).