You walk into the party that your friend begged you to join and see not one single person who looks vaguely familiar. Rather than attempt an awkward conversation with the bartender, you make a beeline for the balcony, the garden, or the closest open window, where you spot a few tendrils of smoke. Light up; the smokers’ circle is always there for you.
It’s a fleeting comfort. Everyone knows the facts about smoking. And if you’re one of those people who think it’s fashionable to puff languidly as you sit at a café in Paris, don’t look too closely at the image of the rotted lung on your pack of Marlboro Golds.
It’s unquestionably more stylish to quit, especially now that the bland, clinical-looking nicotine gum and lozenges are getting a rebrand. The gum that debuted in 1984 when the F.D.A. approved prescription-nicotine-replacement therapy (N.R.T.)—followed later by over-the-counter patches and lozenges—feels as outdated as a pay phone. Even the names of the new offerings—from Jones, Blip, Ripple, and Füm—sound perkier (and more European-cool) than Nicorette and NicoDerm, and some have packaging that would look right at home on the shelves of Sephora.
“As a longtime smoker since high school … thinking about life without smoking was always incredibly anxiety-inducing,” says Alyson Lord, one of the four founders of Blip. She wished “there was something that made quitting fun and not shameful.” Before she and her team launched Blip, last summer, they discovered that N.R.T. products hadn’t changed much in over a decade.
Blip offers nicotine gum and lozenges, as well as flavored toothpicks to address more than just the chemical dependence. They also satisfy some of the behavioral aspects, too, “such as the hand, mouth, and oral fixation,” says Mark Rubinstein, M.D., an addiction researcher and the medical director of Blip. If you wondered what was in Doja Cat’s mouth at the Grammys, now you know: it was a Blip Toothpick.
These modern N.R.T.’s aren’t concerned only with appearance. Since the process of quitting can be isolating, some of the new brands offer community support for smokers and vapers. Brooke Adams, a clinical psychologist in San Francisco, says that the “strong psychological dependencies beyond nicotine addiction,” including smoking and vaping as a social activity and a form of stress relief, add another degree of difficulty to quitting.
“When you vape or smoke, it feels like you’re part of an unspoken club,” says Hilary Dubin, one of the founders of Jones. She and her co-founder, Caroline Vasquez Huber, discovered for themselves that the fear of leaving the smokers’ circle was one of the toughest barriers to giving up vaping. “It was key for us to replicate the camaraderie of vaping and to create a community on the other side,” says Vasquez Huber.
Jones sells nicotine lozenges in a stamped tin case that looks like it could hold breath mints. It also offers round-the-clock text support, an A.I. coach, and a community app to share progress with fellow users. The app can direct like-minded members to gather in smaller groups. And sometimes those breakout groups get together for smoke-free activities such as yoga or flower arranging. “Vaping is social, so quitting should be social, too,” says Dubin.
Some new N.R.T. brands are less ambitious; rather than setting the goal of total cessation, they offer nicotine in different forms. “I found that the N.R.T. products of the time were meant to be medicines and scolded the user for having a problem,” says David Renteln, a co-founder of Lucy. His brand sells gum, lozenges, and snus pouches. (Picture the tiny “Do not eat” packets that come in a bottle of vitamins.) They contain varying amounts of nicotine; one pouch contains 12 milligrams of nicotine versus the usual 4 to 8. Lucy bills itself as “next level nicotine.” They emphasize “intelligent choices,” even though that may be a matter of opinion.
Adams worries that N.R.T. products might become a crutch rather than a cure for dependence, a phenomenon called “cross-addiction.” “The neuroscience behind this is that the brain is still receiving a dopamine flood in the pleasure centers, essentially acting as an alternative key that fits into the lock instead of closing the door altogether,” she says. She prefers nicotine-free products that quell the psychological and behavioral components of vaping, such as Füm’s and Ripple’s flavored-air devices, which allow the user to exhale a puff of nicotine-free vapor, similar to an e-cigarette.
Even the flashiest box of N.R.T. gum or lozenges is going to get you only so far in the quest to become vape- or cigarette-free. It still requires—as tedious and unsexy as it is—motivation, discipline, and support to kick the habit for good. At least now the process has a little unexpected style.
Hannah Baxter is a New York–based writer whose work has appeared in Allure, The Cut, Harper’s Bazaar, and Elle. Her mental-health newsletter is Anxiety Beer
