A review of smoking cessation studies found the majority quit using willpower alone
Jump to full article: The Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday (uk), 2010-02-09
Author: Fiona Macrae
Intro: Smokers desperate to quit should put their faith in willpower rather than expensive patches and gums, researchers said last night.
A review of hundreds of studies into smoking cessation has revealed that the overwhelming majority of ex-smokers gave up without resorting to nicotine replacement therapies.
Old-fashioned willpower alone was enough to make them quit their habit.
What is more, studies which extol the virtues of nicotine patches, gums and pills are more than twice as likely to have been funded by drug companies than others, the Australian researchers said.
Simon Chapman, a professor of public health, said that governments were also guilty of medicalising smoking cessation and of making giving up sound harder than it actually is.
The Sydney University team's analysis of 511 studies on quitting smoking published in recent years showed that two-thirds to three-quarters of ex-smokers stopped unaided and that most said they had found it easier to quit than they had expected. . . .
But Amanda Sandford, of anti-smoking group Ash, disagreed with Professor Chapman's interpretation of the research.
She said that studies into the benefits of nicotine patches and gums were 'robust' and that 'all the evidence points to relying on willpower alone is not terribly successful'. . . .
A spokesman for the Department of Health said: 'This study is inconsistent with a very well established evidence-base. Smokers that attempt to quit without assistance are significantly less likely to quit successfully than those who quit with support.
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