Good news for all you struggling to kick the tobacco habit: Cannabis shows promise for treatment for tobacco addiction.
Cannabidiol, commonly called CBD, has been demonstrated to completely disable the trigger for relapse in most smokers who have quit, according to researchers.
The study, published in the journal Addiction, supports other scientific data suggesting that tobacco users who used a CBD inhaler whenever they felt like lighting a cigarette cut their consumption by 40 percent in one week.
Researchers say CBD could play a transformational role in eliminating the habit of smoking tobacco. Nearly 5 million people die around the world each year due to tobacco-related illness, 500,000 of them in the U.S.
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“These findings suggest that cannabidiol has promise as a novel treatment for tobacco addiction,” said Dr. Tom Freeman, a senior academic fellow at King’s College London, who helped conduct the study. “It might be particularly effective when abstinent smokers are exposed to cues that trigger relapse, such as when they are with a friend who lights a cigarette, or in a particular place they associate with smoking,” he added.
The findings have been examined by other scientists and there is excitement in the medical community. “Taken together, these studies suggest CBD could play a key role in helping people to give up smoking,” said Professor Yasmin Hurd, director of the Addiction Institute at the Mount Sinai hospital network in New York.
And Dr. Amir Englund, of King’s College London, said: “These findings are exciting as they suggest CBD may interfere with some of the underlying mechanisms behind tobacco addiction and could potentially be a treatment for people who are trying to quit.”
Researchers cautioned that more studies are required to confirm whether CBD is an effective treatment for giving up smoking.
