What's with the constant 6-week figure?
Show me 18 weeks to 6 months to a year. Anyone but the heaviest smokers can give it up for six measly weeks. Let's see the success rates for longer periods, when some stressful situation inevitably occurs. I've quit for a few weeks several times.
It's because they know damn straight that after 6 months, the NRT's stop working! Did you notice on the recent test done in Wisconsin that they found using the lozenge in conjunction with the patch offers you the best success rate at 6 months? Heck yeah! That's a lot of nicotine!!!
(Which... I won't even go into the thread of it's own topic that on ALL NRT boxes it says don't use other nicotine products with this product so that is actually a VERY dangerous study to release.)
The end use date situation is an argument against the ecig being an NRT. Will it be required that the ecig have an end use? If so, and this goes RX only first, what happens in six months when you can't stop using the ecig? You can't get a prescription and then go back to cigarettes? Doctors rarely go against manufacturers documentation because if someone has an issue and sues, then the doctor can easily turn the fault to the pharm company who HAS the money to pay off said patient. Plus, Doctors who go against manufacturers warnings can also get into issues with medical malpractice.
The point of an NRT is to ween you off of nicotine. So IF a company wants to sell the ecig to ween you off of nicotine, which is the actual addiction that is being treated (the brain disease of nicotine addiction), then an end use date would be needed, clinical trials etc. However, if the intent is to smoke this for as long as you want just like a tobacco cigarette, well, no end use date is necessary and technically, that's not an NRT by the FDA's current definition.
It's silly... six months. Looking back after a full year of not using nicotine of any kind, whether you are "smoking" a non-nicotine liquid or not... THAT'S quitting nicotine addiction. But that's hardly "quitting smoking". (Smoking is an action... not a disease according to the CDC)