Quitting is easier than you think, said Australian public heath researchers.
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LOS ANGELES: "Smokers are never told that up to 75% of successful ex-smokers quit unaided," said a public health expert, who reviewed hundreds of studies into quitting smoking and is now calling for more effective campaigns and policies worldwide.
Drug companies, tobacco control advocates and public health professionals are over-promoting nicotine replacement therapy and other smoking cessation drugs, according to Simon Chapman and Ross MacKenzie from the University of Sydney, Australia.
The pharmaceutical industry is influencing public health practice away from methods that are proven to help the majority of smokers to quit, they said in their review in the journal PLoS Medicine.
Research into unassisted quitting is neglected
"For obvious reasons (a $1.7 billion market in 2006) the pharmaceutical industry is intent on pathologising a process that for decades saw millions of people quit unaided," Chapman said.
Chapman and MacKenzie reviewed 511 studies published in 2007 and 2008, from research conducted globally, that investigated either assisted or unassisted smoking cessation interventions.
Assisted interventions included nicotine replacement therapy or other drug therapy, behavioural intervention, reduced nicotine cigarettes and smokeless tobacco. Unassisted interventions include public awareness campaigns, smoking restrictions and tobacco tax.
Real world doesn't reflect studies
Of the studies reviewed, 94% investigated assisted quitting. They also found that 48% of research into assisted quitting involved at least one author who declared support from a company that manufactured smoking cessation products.
Chapman and MacKenzie highlight the results from two reviews of studies in 2007, which showed that 51% of industry-funded trials of nicotine replacement therapy reported that it had significant effects on quitting, but only 22% of non-industry funded trials agreed.
In addition, Chapman cautions that "studies of the use of quit drugs in 'real world' settings have not demonstrated that they have such success."
"Clinical trial conditions typically overstate real world effectiveness because of factors such as trial participants getting free drugs … and the participants' desire to please the researchers with whom they interact," the researchers wrote in their study.
