Doctors say to treat smokers like drug addicts

According to this, smokers who are trying to kick the nicotine habit need to be treated like addicts hooked on a drug like heroin. Doctors say that those trying to quit smoking need to be given a product that provides a hit of nicotine as strong as one they'd get from a cigarette, much the same way that heroin addicts use methadone to quit that drug.

The article points out some scary statistics -- 100 million people died in the last century due to the negative effects of smoking cigarettes, 150 million will likely die over the next 20 years and a whopping 1 billion people are projected to die of smoking-related causes in the 21st century.

Unfortunately, those who want to quit only have access to products like nicotine gum or the patch, which deliver low doses of the drug, rather than the kind of fix a smoker would get from a cigarette. The solution? The piece mentions that better cigarette substitutes need to be developed to give smokers a better chance of kicking the habit.