Cold turkey: "abrupt complete cessation of the use of an addictive drug"

While cold turkey continues domination as the quit smoking method responsible for helping more smokers arrest their addiction to nicotine than all other methods combined,[1] it has no economic muscle, political connections, or ability to defend against attack. As WhyQuit can attest, the power, influence, and reach of those marketing a growing array of nicotine delivery products is suffocating. Their mission is to get people to use nicotine. Ours is to help them stop.

And let's be clear, we're not talking about websites or organizations being supportive of WhyQuit, our work, or any form of assisted abrupt nicotine cessation. Frankly, awareness of our work doesn't register among each year's pool of successful cold turkey quitters.

To us, "supportive" means not being openly hostile to the world's productivity quitting champ. It means not being afraid to include cold turkey among listed quitting methods or as a basic question on quitting method surveys. It means sharing basic truths about the quitter's natural instincts, including that trusting in them is how most succeed.

Unfortunately, the supportive list remains rather short.

"Proponents of encouraging smokers to quit without treatment, often called quitting 'cold turkey,' point to data indicating that most smokers who quit successfully do so without medications or any type of formal assistance, as well as to population surveys suggesting that cold-turkey quitters do as well or better than those who use over-the-counter NRTs. Proponents of this approach also suggest that medicalization may disempower smokers and create artificial barriers to quitting (Alpert et al. 2013; Polito 2013)."

• No page dedicated to supporting cold turkey
• Suggesting that cold turkey quitters use replacement nicotine

• Cold turkey omitted from quitting methods page
• Asserts that few smokers are able to quit cold turkey (see page 10)
• "It is difficult to quit smoking on your own, but quitting cold turkey is not your only choice."

• 934 page PATH survey never once asks about cold turkey

• Openly discourages cold turkey quitting claiming few succeed.
• Pfizer Foundation is a Truth Initiative "featured partnership"

• Cold turkey recommendation falsely suggests gradual weaning more effective.

• Cold turkey prevails over counseling plus pharmacotherapy, John R. Polito, 01/18/21
• Joel Spitzer, Mr. Cold Turkey, Retires, John R. Polito, 12/27/20
• FDA quit smoking products again lose to cold turkey, John R. Polito, 09/05/20
• Surgeon General: most smokers succeed cold turkey, John R. Polito, 02/13/20
• Pfizer, are you listening? Cold turkey remains king., John R. Polito, 12/20/19
• Fact check of FDA cold turkey fact check, John R. Polito, 04/04/19
• Pfizer Chantix commercial steals cold turkey, John R. Polito, 02/06/19
• 2018 findings: cold turkey trounces Nicoderm CQ, Chantix, Nicorette and e-cigs, John R. Polito, 12/27/18
• Cold turkey clobbers e-cigs, NRT and Chantix, John R. Polito, 07/18/18
• Gallup Poll: cold turkey 48 times smarter than Nicorette, John R. Polito, 08/26/13
• Cold turkey quitting still king, John R. Polito, 07/15/13
• Replacement nicotine's killing fields, John R. Polito, 02/11/12
• Dying truths about quitting smoking methods, John R. Polito, 11/14/11
• Bias against cold turkey quitting apparent in literature, Dr. Michael Siegel, 11/03/11
• Study finds cold turkey quitting more effective but concludes opposite, Dr. Michael Siegel, 11/01/11
• Tar wars over smoking cessation, Professor Simon Chapman, 08/08/11
• CDC ignores cold turkey quitters John R. Polito, 03/11/10
• Flawed research equates placebo to cold turkey - John R. Polito, 03/12/07
• Nicotine Fix - Behind antismoking policy, influence of drug industry - Kevin Helliker, 02/08/07
• Nixing the patch: smokers quit cold turkey - Ken Millstone, 03/07/07
• Cold turkey twice as effective as NRT or Zyban - John R. Polito, 05/19/06
• Nicotine not medicine, its use not therapy - John R. Polito, 04/18/06
• GlaxoSmithKline attacks cold turkey quitting - John R. Polito, 12/13/05
• UK Guidance for NRT use in pregnancy and by children - ASH London, 12/05
• June 2000 Guideline chairman Michael Fiore's testimony - see PDF pages 14 & 15, 05/05
• The nicotine patch, gum and lozenge - mounting evidence of a sham - John R. Polito, 04/04/05
• 40 years of progress? - Joel Spitzer, 10/04
• Widespread blinding failures put NRT studies in serious question - John R. Polito, 05/19/04
• Nicotine gum maker's concern raises concerns - John R. Polito, 05/17/04
• A quitter's dilemma: hooked on the cure - New York Times, 05/04
• Quebec CT quitters disprove "double your chances" NRT assertion - John R. Polito, 04/27/04
• Are nicotine weaning products a bad joke? - John R. Polito, 10/03

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