A study in the journal Tobacco Control has proven what most doctors and people already realize: nicotine patches and gum are ineffective in the long run. This study followed 800 smokers after they quit. After 2 years, relapse rates were the same whether people used nicotine replacement or not.

COMMENT: Several clinical trials have showed that nicotine replacement had better success than in this trial. However, most of those trials were financed by the companies making the products. In the real world, the results are much poorer.

There's no question that smoking is tough to stop. However, there are alternative methods, such as auricular acupuncture (which decreases the desire to smoke) and mind-body methods (such as hypnosis) that addresses the underlying reasons for smoking that are much more successful.