Options Study

The Options Study is conducted by UW-CTRI in the Madison and Milwaukee areas. Participants temporarily switch from just smoking to alternative products. These products include Juul e-cigarettes or cigarettes with very low nicotine content. Participants will get paid up to $380.

The study was featured in the Wisconsin State Journal.

The Options Study is made possible by a $1.4 million three-year grant from the National Cancer Institute and Food and Drug Administration to the UW Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention (UW-CTRI).

All study participants were smokers who didn’t want to quit, but were willing to switch from their cigarettes to something new for a week. The four weeks of the study had different goals:

• Week 1: Try out the study product they were randomly assigned to use: Juul e-cigarettes, VLN cigarettes or no alternative product. They could smoke their own cigarettes as usual.
• Week 2 (Switch Week): Don’t smoke their own cigarettes but use a patch (active or placebo) and their assigned study product.
• Week 3: Smoke their own cigarettes and use their study product as much as they want.
• Week 4 (Switch Week): Don’t smoke their own cigarettes but use a patch (if they had an active patch with nicotine in Week 2 they now had a placebo patch with no nicotine or vice versa) and their assigned study product.

Researchers will examine how well Juul or low-nicotine cigarettes can substitute for regular smoking, and how nicotine patches factor into it and why.