While all these methods can help get people away from combustible cigarettes, the end goal of quitting nicotine is a more difficult challenge that should not be ignored. With a history that stretches back almost 40 years, the value of NRTs, smoking cessation medications and behavioural therapy as means for quitting is well-established. Long-term data on their effect on health are also lacking. They do offer consumers an alternative, cleaner option to smoking tobacco for taking nicotine, but also run the risk of keeping people in the nicotine addiction cycle. Many people turn to e-cigarettes to quit their tobacco counterpart, but these are not FDA-approved. Nicotine replacement therapies (NRTs), smoking cessation medicines and counselling are the only established, FDA-approved methods for quitting cigarette smoking and tackling nicotine addiction in the US 1. Various activities and tools are available to those who are trying to quit. But the social aspects of smoking and other lifestyle factors can make this a very difficult process. Most adult cigarette smokers want to stop, and many can and do quit for good: since 2002 there have been more former smokers than current smokers. The CDC also estimated that cigarette smoking cost the US more than $600 billion in 2018 - through the burden of smoking-related diseases, addiction support, and lost productivity from illness and premature death. In the US, the CDC estimated that 12.5% of adults were ‘current smokers’ in 2020. Smoking cigarettes remains the leading preventable cause of death worldwide killing more than eight million people each year, according to the WHO. “This highlights how profoundly difficult it can be to break the smoking addiction.” “Early in my career, I met people who told me they found it easier to quit heroin than cigarettes,” says Scott Leischow, research professor in the College of Health Solutions at Arizona State University. Smoking cigarettes remains the leading preventable cause of death worldwide.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |