Challenging the Government's Drug-Centric Approach to Smoking Cessation
Addiction Economy Thought for Today - un-addiction to smoking doesn't have to involve drugs, despite that being the official government policy. Hypnosis and other psychological therapies are very effective, and a nice case study here.
We think this obsession with pharmacological solutions (nicotine replacement products, vapes or Varenicline) is inexplicable and actually concerning. It means nicotine addiction is perpetuated and it embeds a fatalistic expectation effect about smoking which is untrue.
For example, recent academic studies and decades of success has shown that Allen Carr's EasyWay approach is “as, if not more successful” than nicotine replacement therapies, leaving smokers free of all addictions. In the responses to a recommendation from NICE that EasyWay now be available on the NHS, ASH, Cancer Research UK and The Department for Health and Social Care strenuously resisted this guidance with the rationale that: “The Allen Carr method specifically excludes the use of medications and e-cigarettes so including it as a first-line intervention by definition undermines the general approach set out in the guidance that smokers should be offered a combination of behavioural and pharmacological treatment.” NICE dismissed this summarily.
(Here is doc on that https://lnkd.in/ecjnfZMY)
Non-pharma approaches are of course the only way to help vapers quit and should be central to NHS guidance, of which there is almost none. More on that to come.
We have wondered why they did this. Are they entrenched in the 'biological model' of addiction from our White Paper which says addiction is a brain disease requiring a 'cure' and as we all know (not!) the only cures are pharmacological? Or is it derived from the 'moral model' - some people just weak and lack willpower and interventions to the brain and body are the only thing which will help them? It doesn't seem give credence to the 'psychological or social models' which explore why people become addicted and help them understand the roots of that and make different choices. (Which hypnotherapy and Allen Carr do and is the basis of most 'cold turkey' approaches, which are often quite comparable).
I don't think ASH and others are embedded in the Economic Model in their enthusiasm for ensuring that the policy focuses on solutions which also benefit Pharma or Vape companies, but their almost wilful blindness to the promotion of other approaches which are as or more effective is disappointing.
Certainly if hypnotherapy, Allen Carr and other 'talking therapies' got the level of cessation research, media promo and support from ASH that vapes do I think we might see different statistics on quitting than we see from the wall to wall promo of vapes as the only game in town.
Here is our new White Paper on the 5 Models Framework of Addiction - Economic, Social, Biological, Psychological and Moral.
https://lnkd.in/eYMPjEej
Here the Guardian piece
https://lnkd.in/e_VhVf6y