Smoking is still a problem in Wisconsin and beyond. Back in the day when I was a kid, nearly 60% of the men smoked, and one out of three women did so. Now, it’s down to 11%.

That’s a major change, but too many people still light up. Unless you’re Rip Van Winkle and have been asleep for 20 years, everyone knows smoking is bad for you. Lots of people want to quit, have tried to quit, and just can’t do it.

I smoked when I was in college. It took me four good tries to succeed in quitting. But back in those days, there were not the quit-smoking aids there are now.

Bupropion and Chantix are two drugs with proven effectiveness for smoking cessation. Bupropion is an antidepressant that’s a generic drug. It comes in at about $15 per month. But Chantix, if you pay cash, is a whopping $500 per month; even with a Goodrx.com discount, it’s about $100 per month.

That’s why a new study that shows another way to help quit could be great for the pocketbook — it’s vaping. This recent study from the Journal of the American Medical Association showed it’s just as effective as the pills for motivated people who want to kick butt.

Now, before I go on to what the study showed, let me weigh in on teens and vaping. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Congress missed the boat when they didn’t outlaw vaping for those under age 21. Had they done this, we wouldn’t see the increasing number of teens who vape — one in 10 is the estimate, with about a quarter of them who vape every day.

If you have a teen, ask them if they vape. If they do, talk to them about it and encourage them to quit. Too many parents are oblivious to this, but it’s a missed opportunity if they don’t talk to their kids about vaping. And you might want to do that more than once.

We don’t know what the long-term detriments are when it comes to daily vaping. It took us years to realize smoking every day for years can lead to lung cancer, heart disease, stroke, emphysema and chronic bronchitis. Vaping might be just as detrimental, but in the short run, it’s not as bad as what we first thought.

Now on to the study. This was a randomized double-blind study, double dummy placebo-controlled. It included about 450 people who wanted to quit smoking. Some got the real pills, some got dummy pills, some got nicotine vaping and some dummy vaping.

We know the expensive drug Chantix helps people quit smoking. What researchers found in the study was that vaping nicotine e-cigarettes was just as effective as taking Chantix. About 40% of those who vaped or took Chantix were off smoking at six months. Those are tremendous numbers, especially considering many of the folks in the study had tried to quit before.

Now, I’ll tell you something quite interesting about the trial. Roughly 20% of the people in the placebo group, either dummy pills or dummy e-cigarettes, also quit. What does that mean? To me, it shows that this is a mind game — if you think you’re taking something to help you quit, you’ll do better.

It’s not just actually taking the pill or the nicotine replacement by vaping, but also the mindset. You know you want to quit but need some help, and if you think you’re getting that help, you just might get over the hump.

My spin: I’ve been telling my patients vaping is better than smoking, and that’s still the case. I also tell them we don’t know what vaping will do to your lungs in the long run. We know that plain, clean air is the best thing for you.

But in the short run, if you’re a smoker wondering what you can do to quit cigarettes, vaping might be the way to go. It costs less and doesn’t have the side effects of the pills. And when you pick an e-cig, pick a name brand — that will lower the risk that you’ll get a Chinese brand that might have heavy metals.

Keep in mind that at some point, you’ll still have to take the next step, which is to stop vaping, too. For some it’s easy, while for others it’s not. Stay well.