‘It’s A Little Embarrassing’ How Many Doctors Are Failing To Advise Patients To Quit Smoking, Surgeon General Says
U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams says that it's shocking to see the statistics that many smokers are not even warned that they should quit the habit. The report also noted that vulnerable populations in particular are not getting the help they need to stop smoking.
The United States surgeon general warned on Thursday that despite the well-known lethal dangers of cigarettes, too many smokers are not routinely advised by their doctors to quit. In a new report, the surgeon general, Dr. Jerome Adams, urged smokers to use a range of cessation methods that have been proven effective 鈥 and cautioned that e-cigarettes have not. 鈥淔orty percent of smokers don鈥檛 get advised to quit,鈥 Dr. Adams said in an interview. 鈥淭hat was a shocking statistic to me, and it鈥檚 a little embarrassing as a health professional.鈥 (Kaplan, 1/23)
Stopping smoking at any age could add a decade聽to your life, but don't bother quitting with e-cigarettes聽鈥斅爐here's not enough evidence it works, the Surgeon General says. In an interview before the release of the first Surgeon General report on smoking cessation in 30 years, Dr. Jerome Adams urged those as old as 85聽to quit smoking and added fuel to the burning debate over the benefits and risks of聽vaping, which has been billed as a smoking alternative but also has led millions of young people to start using nicotine. (O'Donnell, 1/23)
Behavioral counseling and Food and Drug Administration-approved cessation medications have proven to improve patients' success at quitting smoking. But Adams said considerable disparities exist that make it more difficult for more vulnerable groups to get the kind of support they need. "It's easy for me, who lives in the suburbs, to think that no one smokes anymore 鈥 when I look around, I don't see anyone smoking, and we're at historically low numbers," Adams said. "But the fact is many groups have been left behind by the progress we've made over the last several decades." (Johnson, 1/23)
The new report also notes that "there is presently inadequate evidence to conclude that e-cigarettes, in general, increase smoking cessation" and more research is needed in that area."E-cigarettes are a continually changing and diverse group of products that are used in a variety of ways. Therefore it is difficult to make generalizations about their effectiveness for cessation based on studies of a particular e-cigarette," Adams said. (Howard, 1/23)
