A new French quit smoking study evidences a grand canyon disconnect. While a battalion of cessation experts have been encouraging smokers to transfer to vaping e-cigarettes, already, nearly two-thirds of e-cig users want to quit vaping.

The summary of a study published in Preventive Medicine Reports found that “use of an e-cigarette was significantly associated with tobacco cessation” while “use of NRT was negatively associated with tobacco cessation.”

What the abstract doesn't mention is that the vast majority likely to have successfully arrested their chemical dependence upon nicotine did so without use of e-cigs, replacement nicotine, or other quitting products.

The study’s 8 researchers scrutinized 2017 French Health Barometer survey data associated with 2,783 adults who had smoked for at least 6 months, who had attempted to quit smoking during the 4 years prior to the survey, and who had made their last smoking cessation attempt at least 6 months prior to being surveyed.

Among the 2,783, the overwhelming majority, 61.7% (1,716) attempted to quit unassisted (cold turkey), without the use of e-cigarettes, NRT or any other quit smoking product.

NRT has been the cornerstone of cessation policy in developed nations for roughly 4 decades. This study’s big news should have been that unassisted quitters were 27% more likely than NRT quitters to have successfully quit smoking for 6 months, were 38% more likely to succeed for a year, and 43% more likely to quit for 2 years.

Instead, entitled “Use of tobacco cessation aids and likelihood of smoking cessation: A French population-based study,” the study declared mostly still hooked and nicotine-dependent e-cig users the winners, despite only 15% of 2,783 quitters having been exclusively e-cig users.

It's the second 2022 European study to find that NRT undercuts successful quitting. Strikingly similar, a July UK study found the unadjusted odds of quitting with OTC NRT were 43% lower at one year than quitting unaided.

As early as 1972, the tobacco industry realized that nicotine was the sine qua non of smoking. Apparently, tobacco cessation researchers aren’t yet there.

More than one hundred 2022 studies explored nicotine and e-cig vaping risks. Still, without long-term data, science remains in darkness as to most long-term vaping risks.

As suggested by the French study, is drug addiction a solution? If so, what’s the cure for the cure? More nicotine?

According to a 2010 paper co-authored by Professor Simon Chapman (author of the 2022 book “Quit Smoking Weapons of Mass Distraction”), in that most smokers quit unassisted, the greatest research neglect is in science not understanding how.

Intentionally ignoring the giant turkey in the room, study search engines such as PubMed reveal that, to date, no smoking cessation researcher has shared the keys as to how most smokers in this French study succeeded in breaking nicotine’s grip upon their minds and lives.

Will 2023 be the year that hundreds of tobacco cessation experts are at last able to explain how most quitters succeed? At last, will empathy enlighten them to the reality that tobacco's greatest harm isn't some disease years or decades down the road? It's chemical servitude, nicotine's 2-hour half-life, and how every waking hour of every day gets lived.

Stay tuned.

#NicotineFree2023 Yes you can!

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John R. Polito received his JD from the University of South Carolina School of Law in 1985, where he graduated Wig & Robe. He is a former 3-pack-a-day thirty-year smoker and the 1999 founder of WhyQuit. A nicotine cessation educator since 2000, John mentored under Joel Spitzer for two decades, presenting more than 100 live nicotine dependency recovery programs modeled after Joel's programs. He is the author of "Freedom from Nicotine - The Journey Home," "Smart Turkey," and 6 peer-reviewed journal articles. John is the founder and director of Turkeyville, a 15,000-member Facebook support group exclusively for cold turkey quitters. Email: johnpolito54@gmail.com

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