U.S. Quitting Policy Bans Cold Turkey Quitting
That is exactly what the industry has striven hard to bring about. In June 2000. a panel of “experts” on which 11 of 18 members were pharmaceutical industry consultants, was allowed to author official U.S. smoking cessation policy. Not surprisingly the panel effectively destroyed all state and federal support for cold turkey quitters and quitting by requiring that all U.S. quitters be encouraged to purchase and use cessation pharmacology products, unless it posed risks to their health.
The Bush administration’s parting gift to the pharmaceutical industry was allowing another panel of experts, which included nearly all members from the 2000 panel, to revise U.S. quitting policy. The May 2008 Clinical Practice Guideline for Treating Tobacco Use and Dependence added Pfizer’s newest quitting product, Chantix, to the list of mandatory quitting product options.
The wording of the May 2008 provision that consumes all other quitting methods and effectively destroys any attempt to support, counsel or assist cold turkey quitters reads:
“Numerous effective medications are available for tobacco dependence, and clinicians should encourage their use by all patients attempting to quit smoking – except when medically contraindicated or with specific populations for which there is insufficient evidence of effectiveness (i.e., pregnant women, smokeless tobacco users, light smokers, and adolescents).”
It was hoped that the Obama Administration’s pledge to ensure that science will be driven by facts, not profits, extended to U.S. cessation policy. But since 2000, decline in the U.S. nicotine addiction rate has stalled, while our government continues to effectively outlaw our nation’s most effective and productive quitting method, in favor of enriching the pharmaceutical industry.
Why do cessation pharmacology products continue to double placebo user quitting rates inside clinical trials yet fail so miserably against cold turkey quitters in real-world competition? It’s simple. The clinical trial’s alleged scientific foundation, that researchers were somehow able to blind study participants to whether or not they had been assigned to the pharmacology group or to a group using an inert placebo product, is a farce and sham. Multiple studies now show that roughly 3.3 times as many participants can correctly identify their treatment assignment than cannot.
Nicotine addicts with prior quitting histories are skilled in recognizing both the presence and absence of full-blown withdrawal. Clinical trials did not measure product efficacy. They measured the fulfillment and frustration of participant expectations.
If you were a nicotine addict hoping to receive a free three month supply of expensive replacement nicotine, would you have stuck around and allowed researchers to toy with you if you realized that you’d been given placebos instead? Neither did they.
Now that GSK’ own research suggests that President Obama would be wise to immediately jump into the quitting pool without pharmacology, how much longer will it take before the President issues an executive order suspending current U.S. quitting policy, ordering an investigation into the validity of using placebo controls in drug addiction studies, and orders all U.S. health agencies to immediately begin offering encouragement and support to quitters trusting their natural instincts and attempting to abruptly end all nicotine use?
As Dr. Siegel puts it, “God forbid that a smoker succeed in quitting without providing profits to Big Pharma.” Hopefully President Obama, even though still slave to nicotine himself, has the wisdom to see the light.
