Nicotine letdown
Nicotine replacement therapies (NRT), specifically nicotine patches and nicotine gum, did not improve smokers’ chances of long-term cessation in a study by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and the University of Massachusetts Boston. The study appears Jan. 9 in an online edition of Tobacco Control and will appear in a later print issue. “What this study shows is the need for the Food and Drug Administration, which oversees regulation of both medications to help smokers quit and tobacco products, to approve only medications that have been proven to be effective in helping smokers quit in the long term and to lower nicotine in order to reduce the addictiveness of cigarettes,” said co-author Gregory Connolly, director of the Center for Global Tobacco Control at HSPH. In the prospective cohort study, the researchers, including lead author Hillel Alpert, research scientist at HSPH, and co-author Lois Biener of the University of Massachusetts...