Cigarette consumption and sales of nicotine replacement products

Background-The first nicotine replacement product, Nicorette Gum, was marke ted in 1984 as an adjuvant to help smokers quit smoking. In 1992, sales of nicotine patches were begun. Before 1996, nicotine gums and nicotine patche s were prescribed by physicians and supplemented with behavioural counselli ng. Since 1996, nicotine gums and patches became available over the counter . Objectives-To examine the effect of sales of nicotine replacement products on national cigarette consumption. Design-National time series quarterly cigarette consumption, sales of nicot ine gums and patches data between 1976 and 1998 are used to estimate a time series autoregressive moving average intervention model. Participants-National reported statistics. Main outcome measures-Per capita cigarette sales. Results-A 10% increase in sales of nicotine replacement products will lead to a 0.04% reduction in cigarette sales. The model indicates that a 0.076% reduction in cigarette consumption is associated with the availability of n icotine patches after 1992. The over the counter dummy variable (after 1996 ) has a negative sign, but is not significant, perhaps due to only a few qu arters of data in the study period. Conclusions-Nicotine replacement products (nicotine gums and nicotine patch es) play a significant role in reducing cigarette consumption, in addition to the negative effect of increasing cigarette price and the overall trend of declining cigarette consumption las reflected by the time trend variable ). The findings of this study suggest that additional efforts for promoting sales of nicotine replacement products will be another effective alternati ve to discouraging cigarette consumption.