Nicotine Inhaler May Be Next Wave To Help Smokers Stop

TOBACCO April 1993

A controlled, one-year trial with a new nicotine inhaler found the device highly effective in helping smokers abstain (Philip Tonnesen, Jesper Norregaard, Kim Mikkelsen, et al, "A Double-Blind Trial Of A Nicotine Inhaler For Smoking Cessation," Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), 3/10/93, Vol. 269, No. 10, p. 1268).

A total of 286 volunteer smokers wanting to quit who smoked at least 10 cigarettes daily when recruited participated in the trial, with 145 placed, without their knowledge, on the inhalable nicotine spray, and 141 placed, equally without their knowledge, on a placebo spray. After one year, 15 percent of the nicotine spray users were abstinent from cigarettes compared to only 5 percent of the placebo users. The study was conducted by a group of Scandinavian physicians.