Cigarettes are just a delivery system for getting nicotine into the bloodstream, it’s that simple!

Have we heard that before? Are we ignoring the elephant in the room that is NRT?

There are two giants involved, Tobacco & Pharma and both will spend flippin’ great wads of cash to make sure you buy their products, ignoring the also-rans in this case, cigarettes and NRT. They have the power to alter opinion and fund the research required to justify their sales. We’ve known for years now that quit rates tend to stabilize well below 10% for all methods and even the most careful of statistical manipulation just alters tiny relative factors to favour one produce slightly in one bit of research.

It’s easy to educate a primary school child that smokers suck on a drug-filled fag to get the effects of the drug and need to repeat this at regular intervals as the drug wears off. Given a boring weekend I could probably teach my dog that.

This entire concept fuelled the disastrous ‘therapeutic’ nicotine rollercoaster.

Give the smoker nicotine from an alternate source; let’s say a transdermal patch and they’ll have no wish to smoke. Hmmm, that’s strange, they’re still smoking, still gagging for a fag.

Ok, it’s not the nicotine per se it’s also the delivery method, let’s put nicotine in a gum and they’ll get bursts of nicotine just like a fag! Hmmm, that’s strange; they’re still smoking, still gagging for a fag.It’s the chewing, let’s stick it in a lozenge and it’ll dissolve for a burst in the mouth experience! Oh dear, that’s strange, they’re still smoking, still gagging for a fag.

Aaaah, we’ve got it, let’s make a plastic fag type thingy with nicotine in it and they can pretend to smoke it, that’s bound to work? Hmmm, that’s strange; they’re still smoking, still gagging for a fag.

I tell you what we haven’t tried, let’s shove some nicotine in a bottle and every time they want a fag they can just squirt it in their gob, no way can that fail. Hmmm, that’s strange; they’re still smoking, still gagging for a fag.

At this point the ultimate in NRT comes along and it’s not even made by Pharma. Hello E-Cig you’re the answer to our needs. Here we have a digital smoke. We vaporize nicotine; inhale it into our lungs with none of the harmful side effects of tobacco. We can blow smoke rings, use it in the pub and the end even lights up!  Hmmm, that’s strange; they’re still smoking, still gagging for a fag!
There must come a point when the head scratching starts and someone asks, “are you sure we’ve understood this nicotine thing correctly.”When smokers are wandering around totally dosed up on nicotine and it’s leaking out of every pore and pooling around their ankles yet they’re still gagging to smoke it’s a little bizarre to tell them that they only want to smoke because they clearly are craving more nicotine!

It’s not even speculative. We know that nicotine therapies don’t help people quit yet people fall for their scam time and time again.
Just how long are we justified in flogging a dead horse before we give it a decent burial?