October 28, 2015 – Low Nicotine

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Anchor lead:  Are low nicotine cigarettes the answer to smoking cessation? Elizabeth Tracey reports

Smokers who had no intention of quitting the habit and who were provided with low nicotine cigarettes make twice as many attempts to stop smoking as those whose cigarettes contained the usual amount of nicotine, a recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine found. Enid Neptune, a lung expert at Johns Hopkins, reviews the findings.

Neptune: The enrollees who used low nicotine cigarettes smoked 23 to 33% fewer cigarettes.  When they were unable to smoke they had minimal withdrawal symptoms. More importantly when they followed them over that 30 day period after the study was completed, 17% of those who were smoking cigarettes with the regular nicotine content attempted to quit, whereas 35%, almost double the number, of those who used the lower nicotine cigarettes, tried to quit.  :31

Neptune concludes that the study clearly provides evidence that low nicotine cigarettes may be an important addition to a multipronged effort to stop smoking.  At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.