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Nicotine Patches Could Help More Smokers Quit

may 27, 2005
Giving smokers easy access to free nicotine patches could substantially increase the likelihood of them quitting, concludes a study in this week's issue of The Lancet.

Tobacco kills around 5 million people worldwide every year and is the leading preventable cause of death in developed countries. It is estimated that more than 70 percent of smokers in the USA are interested in stopping but only 7 percent of those who try without medicine or counselling successfully stop for a year or more. Smokers who use nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) are much more likely to quit than those who do not use such treatment.

Thomas Frieden of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and colleagues undertook a large-scale distribution programme of free nicotine patches in New York. In April 2003 the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene publicised the availability of a free 6-week course of nicotine patches to the first 35,000 eligible smokers to call the New York State Smokers Quitline.

The investigators sent nicotine patches to 34,000 individuals and attempted follow-up counselling calls for all recipients. About 1,300 randomly selected participants underwent a 6-month follow-up survey. Individuals who requested and were enrolled in the program but who, because of mailing errors, did not receive the treatment, were also surveyed.

More nicotine patch recipients (33%) successfully quit smoking than people in the comparison group (6%). Those who received a counselling call were more likely to quit than those who did not. At least 6000 successful quits could be attributed to receipt of free nicotine, at a cost of $464 or less each, the authors found.

"Although New York City implemented this programme at a time when new smoke-free workplace legislation and increased taxation on cigarettes focused public attention on cessation, these findings suggest the potential for similar interventions to encourage large numbers of smokers to attempt to quit smoking."

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