These figures are very encouraging, Shiffman says. Addictions are hard to quit. The American Lung Association reports the same low success rates for smokers who quit cold turkey, without help. But lung association spokesman Alex Steinberg of New York's Hudson Valley chapter says that smokers who sign on with one of his organization's stop-smoking programs do as well, if not better, than those in the Nicorette study. These are time-tested professional techniques used in medical settings.
Smoking is still a national problem, however.
Although smoking rates have declined steadily since the 1960s, there are still 48 million smokers in the United States, almost one-quarter of the adult population, according to 1997 lung association statistics. The participants in the Nicorette study were heavy smokers. Almost equally divided among men and women, they had an average age of 41, and had smoked for an average of 22 years. Ninety-one percent had tried to quit before, an average of five times. Before quitting they'd averaged 26 cigarettes a day and had the first one about 15 minutes after waking up, which is an indicator of tobacco dependence.