The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 274 No 7352 p671
4 June 2005

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Easy access to NRT can improve quit rate

Easy access to free nicotine replacement therapy patches can substantially increase the likelihood of quitting smoking, a study in The Lancet concludes (2005;365:1849).

A six-week course of NRT was sent to 34,000 smokers in New York, 1,300 of whom were followed up at six months.

More NRT recipients than comparison group members had quit smoking at six months (33 per cent compared with 6 per cent).

However, an accompanying editorial (ibid, p1831) suggests that the success of the programme may have been overestimated, since it relied on self-verification of quitting at six months.