Monetary Incentives May Improve Chances of Quitting Smoking

Adults with low socioeconomic status who received small financial rewards for quitting smoking in addition to usual care were more than 3 times as likely to have continued to abstain after about 3 months than were those who received only usual care, according to a recent randomized clinical trial. The study involved 320 participants in the US who were uninsured or covered by Medicaid—groups that tend to have a harder time quitting, the researchers noted in JAMA Network Open. Usual care involved a combination of counseling and pharmacotherapy, such as nicotine patches plus lozenges or gum.