Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 23, 1990 TAG: 9005230009
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CHICAGO LENGTH: Medium
But the results may be misleading because programs to stop smoking tend to draw the most addicted puffers, who may have failed previously and may be unable to quit without help, said the study's authors and other researchers.
Forty million Americans have stopped smoking, but more than 71 million are still at it, up to a third of whom try to quit annually, researchers said in today's Journal of the American Medical Association.
Fewer than 10 percent succeed at dropping the habit for a year or longer, said the researchers, who used data from a 1986 nationwide telephone survey of more than 13,000 adult smokers.
Among those who had tried to stop within the previous 10 years, the researchers said, 47.5 percent who had tried solo succeeded, and 23.6 percent of those enrolled in cessation programs made it.
Eighty-five percent of those who tried, and 90 percent of those who succeeded, did so on their own rather than in formal programs, said Dr. Michael C. Fiore, a professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and head of the study.
Mose people who try to quit alone "quit cold turkey," he said.
The researchers reported that those who succeeded tended to be older and more educated but were equally as likely to be heavy smokers - 25 or more cigarettes a day.
"Smokers are different, and some successfully quit on their own, but hard-core smokers appear to need the programs," Fiore said.
More than 70 percent of people who tried to quit had been urged to do so by a doctor, compared with 46 percent in the group overall, the researchers said.
American Cancer Society spokesman Joe Patterson said: "We support those findings."
The society offers self-help material for smokers trying to quit, including supporting the annual Great American Smokeout, he said. Besides school health programs aimed at discouraging youngsters from taking up the habit, the society also offers a "FreshStart" smoking cessation program, Patterson added.
That program recorded a 14 percent success rate in a recent study, led by Dr. Harry A. Lando of the University of Minnesota, who agreed with Fiore in saying such programs tend to draw the most nicotine-dependent smokers.
But "the best group programs get 40 percent success - that is for intense kind of treatment," Lando said in an interview Monday.
Smoking is blamed for 390,000 U.S. deaths a year. About 1.3 million smokers quit every year, but their ranks are being replenished by 1 million people annually - mostly young people - who start smoking, Fiore said.
An independent report in Wednesday's JAMA said tobacco companies and federal and state governments reap more than $500 million a year from sales of tobacco products to minors, accounting for 3.3 percent of the domestic market.
The estimate was based largely on federal surveys of smoking patterns among youngsters, on tobacco company sales and profits and on tax rates, said authors Dr. Joseph R. DiFranza of the University of Massachusetts Medical School at Fitchburg and Joe B. Tye of Baystate Medical Center in Springfield.
Thomas Lauria, a spokesman for the Washington-based Tobacco Institute, an industry trade group, called the report a "preposterous economic analysis," saying the authors "start off with the erroneous assumption that the industry targets kids, and extrapolate from there."
"So they not only build sand castles in the air, they fly flags up the sand castles," he said.
by CNB