Adolescents and smoking

50 adolescents decide to quit smoking. Their choice of method: a nicotine patch. How many of them will indeed have stopped smoking after a year?

Stoppen met roken

Probably not many. We studied adolescents wishing to quit smoking for a full year. In our study, these youngsters, of an average age of 17, received either a nicotine patch treatment or a treatment with placebo patches. During the first treatment period, we saw some positive effects within the adolescents using nicotine patches. However, after 6 and 12 months of the start of the treatments there was no longer any difference between either treatment: the percentage of quitters in the nicotine patch group was just as high or low as that in the placebo patch group.
Only 4.4% of the adolescents that tried to stop using the nicotine patches were still not smoking a year on. This is about 2 out of the 50 youngsters. This means that, contrary to what applies to adults, treatment with nicotine patches alone is not sufficient to help youngsters to stop  smoking.