PHILADELPHIA, Feb 12, 2009 (UPI via COMTEX) -- Significantly more smokers are
successful at quitting if they are paid to give up their cigarettes, U.S.
researchers have learned.
Still, they found, 90 percent couldn't lick the health-threatening habit even
with financial incentives and were smoking a year later.
The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, involved 878
smokers -- mean age 45; 65 percent male; 90 percent white -- who worked for a
multinational company. All received materials on smoking cessation.
About half received monetary rewards for reaching some smoking cessation goals:
$100 after completing a smoking cessation program, $250 for confirmed abstinence
six months after their quit date and $400 more for confirmed abstinence a year
after their quit date, MedPage Today reported.
Dr. Kevin Volpp of the University of Pennsylvania and colleagues found although
abstinence rates declined in both groups by one year after their quit dates, the
percentage of smokers who quit remained significantly higher in the incentive
group -- 9.4 percent versus 3.6 percent.
Abstinence was confirmed by measuring the levels of cotinine -- a metabolite of
nicotine -- in saliva or urine.
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