Low nicotine cigarettes may not help smokers quit

Simply reducing the nicotine content of cigarettes may not help smokers to kick the butt, a new study has found.
In the two-year study involving 135 smokers, those in the test group smoked five levels of progressively lower nicotine content cigarettes over the course of one year, the lowest nicotine content cigarette being smoked for 7 months.
Participants in the control group smoked their usual brand of cigarettes for 12 months. All subjects were then followed for another 12 months after returning to their own cigarettes or quitting.
The idea being tested was that progressively reducing nicotine intake from cigarettes would make smokers less dependent and more likely to quit.

During the 12-month follow-up, the lower levels of cotinine (a nicotine derivative found in plasma that provides an accurate record of the nicotine intake from smoking in recent days) in test group subjects returned to levels similar to smokers in the control group, suggesting that they had returned to their former levels of smoking.
Quitting among test group members remained low - at 24 months the percentage of smokers in the test group who quit smoking was not higher than that of the control group.
"We don't know that very low nicotine cigarettes will not work to reduce nicotine dependence and enhance quitting, but progressively reducing nicotine content of cigarettes in the way we did, without other means of supporting smokers, did not produce the desired results," said lead author Neal Benowitz from University of California, San Francisco.

The study was published in the journal Addiction.