Substitutes May Help Smokeless Tobacco Users to Cut Back

Smokeless tobacco users who didn't want to quit changed their minds or significantly cut back when given nicotine lozenges or tobacco-free snuff.

Tobacco chewers and snuff users who didn't want to quit changed their minds or significantly cut back when given nicotine lozenges or tobacco-free snuff, finds a new study.

Mayo researchers recruited 81 users of chewing tobacco or snuff with no intention of quitting in the next 30 days. Forty were given 4-mg nicotine lozenges and 41 received tobacco-free snuff to help cut back their smokeless tobacco use. They were asked to cut back 50 percent by one month and 75 percent by two months.

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Participants received eight weeks of treatment and behavioral counseling on tobacco reduction strategies with follow-up to 26 weeks.

Both groups significantly reduced smokeless tobacco use in cans used per week and dips per day and sustained it through the end of the study.

About one-third of study participants continued using 75 percent less smokeless tobacco use 26 weeks after the study, and 12 percent of the participants quit using it completely.

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"The reason why that is so striking and important to us is these patients had no intention of quitting," says addiction expert Jon Ebbert, M.D., a tobacco researcher at the Mayo Clinic Nicotine Dependence Center.

"Through the process of just reducing their tobacco, participants wanted to quit and were successful in doing so."