Get Healthy!

• Posted September 5, 2024

The 3 Best Ways to Stop Smoking, Rated by Science

Thinking about quitting smoking?

There are three top ways to help you stop, a new review finds.

According to the study, folks wanting to quit should turn to:

• Varenicline, a prescription nicotine-blocking drug sold under the brand names Chantix and Champix

• Cytisine, a plant-based compound sold as an over-the-counter supplement in Canada and Europe

• Nicotine e-cigarettes

“Quitting smoking is difficult, and some people find it harder to quit than others, but tobacco is uniquely deadly among legal consumer products, so it’s important to seek help quitting,” said lead investigator Jonathan Livingstone-Banks, a lecturer and researcher in evidence-based health care with the University of Oxford in the U.K.

“There’s a range of effective forms of support for smoking cessation, and cytisine, varenicline and e-cigarettes are all evidence-based ways to greatly increase people’s chances of successfully quitting smoking,” Livingstone-Banks added.

These strategies work best when combined with counseling or other behavioral support, researchers said.

“For behavioral support, evidence is strongest for counseling and for programs that reward people for stopping smoking,” said senior researcher Jamie Hartmann-Boyce, an assistant professor of health policy and management with the University of Massachusetts Amherst School of Public Health and Health Sciences.

Bupropion and nicotine replacement therapy are also effective, especially if nicotine patches are combined with fast-acting forms like gum, researchers said.

The new study was published Sept. 4 in the journal Addiction.

For people who smoke cigarettes, the single best thing they can do for their health is to quit smoking,” Hartmann-Boyce said in a UMass news release. “However, many people find it difficult to do so. Fortunately, there is strong evidence to support the use of a number of different ways to quit smoking.”

For the new review, researchers considered evidence pooled in 2023 from 319 studies involving more than 157,000 participants.

To that data, they added another 75 clinical trials focused on varenicline and cytisine.

“Our team will continue to review evidence on the best ways to help people quit smoking, as we know how vitally important this is to people who smoke and to public health,” Hartmann-Boyce said.

More information

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about varenicline.

SOURCE: University of Massachusetts Amherst, news release, Sept. 4, 2024