spending the money on the nicotine patches was a complete waste

Governments all around the world have invested millions of pounds in smoking cessation products in order to drive down smoking rates and ultimately improve the health of their citizens. There is a concern however that in many cases the money is not well spent and that the return on the substantial investments are minimal in terms of improving health and saving on health care costs.

For example a new project conducted by a team of researchers from Harvard University looked at whether a $25 million anti-smoking campaign undertaken by the regional government of British Columbia was actually effective. The program included free handouts for twelve weeks of nicotine patches or nicotine gum to individuals wanting to quit, but according to the Harvard University report quitting cold turkey or using a nicotine patch had exactly the same success and failure rates suggesting that spending the money on the nicotine patches was a complete waste.

The study which was conducted in conjunction with the University of Massachusetts looked at almost 800 individuals and followed their quit smoking attempts over a six year period.  It was clear that whether people used nicotine patches or not their relapse rates were the same.

The researchers also pointed out that nicotine replacement therapy when used by heavy smokers might even be doing harm to the smoking cessation attempt because the smokers looked at the nicotine patches as a sort of miracle therapy which could rid them of their cravings. Unfortunately, when the smokers realized that the nicotine replacement therapy was not the answer to all their problems they became demoralized and this often made them start smoking again.

It may be that governments need to spend more time analyzing the effectiveness of different smoking cessation therapies and possibly invest more money in public health advertising campaigns, smoking bans, smoking taxes and medications which have a clearly proven effectiveness and safety.