Study: U.S. smokers not being helped to quit

Of the 44.5 million adult smokers in the United States, 70 percent want to quit and 40 percent make a serious quit attempt each year

Friday, June 16, 2006;

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- U.S. smokers are not being helped to kick the habit, even though there are strategies that work, such as mass media campaigns, counseling and nicotine replacement therapy, a panel of experts reported on Wednesday.

"Of the 44.5 million adult smokers in the United States, 70 percent want to quit and 40 percent make a serious quit attempt each year, but fewer than 5 percent succeed in any given year," the National Institutes of Health, which sponsored the panel, said in a statement.

This is in part because tobacco is so addictive, the panel of experts said. But it is also because people do not get the kinds of help that have been shown to work.

"Quitting is a struggle, but researchers have learned a lot about what works to help people quit smoking. We need to make sure that effective interventions reach the people who need them most," Dr. David Ransohoff, a professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who chaired the NIH conference, said in a statement.

"To increase demand for treatments we must motivate smokers to want them, expect them, and use them."

The group of experts met as a part of the NIH's consensus conference series, arranged to get experts to compare various scientific studies and come up with a general agreement on what the facts are surrounding a particular medical issue.

After looking at the evidence the experts agreed that it is clear that nicotine replacement therapy, telephone quit-lines, and counseling all work on their own and work even better when combined.

Raising taxes, restricting advertising and sales to youth and mass media education campaigns also work, found the panel, which included nurses, pediatricians, addiction specialists and other experts.

And it is important to stop smokers before they start, the panel said. It noted that almost all adult daily smokers started smoking before age 18 and more than 20 percent of U.S. 12th-graders, aged 16 to 18, have smoked in the prior 30 days.

Copyright 2006 Reuters.

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