" a new study published recently...found those who had used nicotine patches, gum, inhalers or nasal sprays... Nearly a third relapsed. "
This is NOT "new" news. Look at this LA Times article from 1999 (now 12 years old):
Big Tobacco Keeps Thumb on Makers of Stop-Smoking Aids - Los Angeles Times
QUOTE FROM ARTICLE: "For all the fears of tobacco companies, research suggests that a relatively small proportion of smokers who use gum and patches actually quit on any one attempt. The products double the odds of quitting, but even then the quit rate remains low.
According to some studies, on any single attempt people who try quitting cold turkey succeed about 3% of the time, whereas success with gum or patches rises to 7% or 8% [Note: this means a 92% to 93% FAILURE RATE] --even higher when the products are combined with counseling. As marketers acknowledge, successful quitters usually need to make several attempts.
The result is thousands of smokers cycling between competing forms of nicotine, "turning to a patch, gum or pill for a month" as a result of a New Year's resolution, "then relapsing to a cigarette product," said [Gregory N.] Connolly of the Massachusetts tobacco control program [Note: described as an "anti-smoking guru," but actually an anti nicotine and tobacco zealot, whom I call ANTZ.]
"You get this sort of strange, symbiotic relationship between the tobacco industry and the drug companies where everybody makes money."
Nothing has changed - NRT are still highly ineffective and this "strange, symbiotic relationship" still exists, with the added partners of governments relying on tobacco taxes to pay their bills and anti-tobacco people like Gregory N. Connolly deciding that if they cannot beat 'em, join 'em and take the funding from the drug companies to encourage people to quit, while fighting to keep cigarettes as the only legal and easily available tobacco product (ban anything that could be remotely considered "safer" and/or not made by the tobacco or drug companies.) ANTZ like Connally triumphantly got flavored cigarettes banned (a measly 4% of the tobacco market) by conspiring with the tobacco companies to leave menthol - the biggest selling "flavor" - out of the ban. Then they've gone after every smoke-free tobacco product, which would significantly reduce tobacco health risks if smokers switched, as an imaginary threat to children. They accuse flavored smoke-free tobacco lozenges and e-cigarettes as targeting children or appealing to children, while conveniently ignoring the fact that other nicotine products intended for adults - pharmaceutical gums and tic-tac like lozenges - also come in mint, cherry, coffee, fruit chill and orange.
Is it really any surprise that all of these people have come out in opposition to a product that A) isn't made by tobacco or drug companies, B) doesn't bring in exorbitant tax revenues like cigarettes and C) gets smokers out of "cycling between competing forms of nicotine?" Don't kid yourself - this has nothing to do with concerns about public health and everything to do with keeping the gravy train going. If Big Pharma had invented and marketed e-cigarettes in the exact same manner (with the same minimal, industry-funded research), I would bet you that there would be no current e-cigarette "controversy."
