In America, there are 47,000,000 adults who smoke cigarettes, yet 70% of those smokers want to quit (Golden West, 2000). Since there are so many smokers, and most of them want to quit, a societal need is and has been developing. People need to be informed about how to quit smoking. They need to be informed about some of the methods of quitting, including the positive and negative consequences, as well as success rates of each.
             Quitting is not as simple as just deciding not to smoke, as anyone has smoked for any significant amount of time will tell you. This is because of the addictive chemical found in cigarettes called nicotine. Nicotine is an alkaloid that is a colorless, transparent, oily liquid that has an acrid odor, and an acrid burning taste and is intensely poisonous (Webster's, 1998).
             One popular quitting aid is the nicotine gum. This gum is available in prescription and nonprescription form. Each year, 1.5 to 2 million Americans try the nicotine laced gum (Trubo, 2002). The nicotine gum is usually involves a 12 week program that replaces the nicotine that you would normally get from smoking a cigarette when you chew it. The nicotine is absorbed through the lining of the mouth and then enters the bloodstream. As your body gets used to not smoking, you decrease the amount of gum chewed and eventually quit altogether.
             This particular method is not without its side effects, however. Some common, mild side effects include: Injury or irritation to mouth, teeth, or dental work, belching, headaches, increased appetite, increased watering of the mouth, jaw-muscle ache, and sore mouth or throat (National Library of Medicine,2002). A study reported in Addiction, it showed that over-the-counter users of the gum had a 16.1% success rate at six weeks, whereas the prescription users had a 7.7% success rate; at six months, the OTC users still had higher rates than the prescription users, 8.4 percent versus 7.7...