This habit is a washout

A former smoker invents "liquid" cigarettes to give quitters a lift.

Perhaps a little to their anguish, health minister Anbumani Ramadoss continues to urge the high and the mighty to set an example and quit smoking. The latest in line is chain-smoking Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.

While the Bengal chief minister may have dismissed the personal digs and indicated he will continue to smoke in the state secretariat, Ramadoss is sure to keep his foot on the tobacco trail.

In parallel, researchers in the US are currently working on what could perhaps provide a fresh push to the anti-tobacco campaign across the world. They are giving what are referred to as "liquid cigarettes" a clinical try.

Functioning along the lines of nicotine patches and gum, this new smoking cessation device acts as a replacement for nicotine, without the smoke and carcinogens.

But this "Smoke-Break" is apparently unique because it involves the hand-to-mouth delivery method, the same way a cigarette is smoked. Its inventor Brett Roth has said that he wanted to "duplicate the act of smoking, without the smoke".

Roth was a smoker for 20 years before he decided to look for a more effective device than patches and gum to kick the habit. Currently, around 20 smokers are giving it a shot in a clinical trial, after it was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last year.

In its appearance too, the device is similar to a cigarette. The tube is filled with a fruit-flavoured liquid gel which has a small dose of nicotine. Each Smoke-Break has 1.5 mg of nicotine, about the amount a light cigarette would have.

The device is expected to be used for 1-3 months, after which researchers hope the individual's pattern of smoking would decrease.

Dr Sameer Kaul, an oncologist at Apollo Hospital, however, says that on its own a liquid cigarette may not work. "The relapse rate while using devices such as nicotine patches, after a duration of two years, is very high. So though a liquid cigarette might help in quitting for a while, one puff in the same environment and it's back to smoking. What may work is collaborating the device with psychotherapy," he says.

The similarity in shape and size to a cigarette and the way in which it is consumed, though, may make it more popular than nicotine patches, he agrees. Now we wonder what the health minister has to say.