NVPs as a smoking cessation tool

Nicotine Vaping Products (NVPs) have a potential role to play in addressing the lack of treatment options for people who smoke and are unmotivated or unwilling to quit smoking. At any one point in time, this could account for the majority of people who smoke.

For people who smoke, their cigarette consumption represents an urgent health risk that should be addressed with maximal clinical attention.

Smoking cessation is difficult

Unfortunately, the clinically observed pattern of smoking cessation shows that current treatments are poor at facilitating stable abstinence in long-term dependent smokers ^{[1] [2]}:

• Around 50% of people who smoke will quit on their first serious quit attempt;
• The rest will exhibit a characteristic chronic pattern of cessation/relapse that takes, on average, 20 years and 30 attempts before successful abstinence; and
• Some will never attempt to quit, while others will stop trying to quit.

The consequences of failed quit attempts

Morbidity and mortality typically start to compound in people who smoke after the age of 30 ^[3]. A dependent smoker at that age that fails a first serious quit attempt can expect to be abstinent at 50 having inflicted severe damage to their health and incurred a significant risk of early death.

On the other hand, successfully quitting smoking is likely to confer health benefits at any age.