Smoking and alcohol consumption are two major risk factors for manifold morbidity and mortality outcomes and are highly correlated with each other. No conclusion has been reached concerning whether cigarette smokers drinking alcohol have more difficulties with smoking cessation.
We aimed to elucidate the association of concurrent alcohol consumption with the probability of smoking cessation in non-clinical populations.
Using alcohol abstainers as the reference group and controlling for potential confounders, relative cessation rates (95% CI) increased to 1.17 (1.02, 1.34), 1.36 (1.20, 1.55), 1.45 (1.27, 1.66) and 1.32 (1.13, 1.53) with concurrent consumption of 1–39, 40–99, 100–199 and 200+
g alcohol/week. This pattern persisted in extensive sensitivity analyses.
The results of these analyses of time-varying concurrent alcohol consumption and smoking suggest that drinking low-to-moderate amounts of alcohol as common in the general population might actually facilitate cessation in non-clinical settings
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