To Quit, 'Nicotine-Free' Smokes As Good As Lozenges

Trying to quit smoking? So-called nicotine-free cigarettes may be as helpful as nicotine lozenges, hints a small study.

Smokers who used the nicotine-free cigarettes before quitting were as likely not to be smoking six weeks later as those who used nicotine lozenges, authors report in the journal Addiction. (Such cigarettes actually have a tiny amount of nicotine.)

And nicotine-free cigarettes and the lozenges both beat low-nicotine cigarettes, Dr. Dorothy K Hatsukami, at the University of Minnesota Tobacco Use Research Center in Minneapolis, and colleagues note.

Nicotine-free cigarettes have 0.05 milligrams of nicotine per cigarette, while low-nicotine cigarettes each have 0.3 milligrams. For comparison, light cigarettes have between 0.7 and 1.0 milligrams of nicotine.

While scientists have tried various ways to reduce the amount of nicotine smokers inhale to help them cut down, they have been concerned that smokers may just smoke more cigarettes to make up for what they're missing.

The idea of nicotine-free cigarettes is to make that much less likely, because it would take so many such cigarettes.

Hatsukami's team compared smoking habits and rates of quitting in 165 mostly middle-age men and women who had smoked for an average of about 15 years, reported multiple previous attempts to quit, and appeared highly motivated to try again.