Can Weed Help You Quit Smoking Cigarettes?

October 15, 2026Updated October 17, 202622 min read

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About as many people trying to quit cigarettes used weed as used prescription quit pills.

That's the finding in a new national survey, as Marijuana Moment reports it. The people who used THC reported rougher withdrawal, sleep included.

I smoke most days, and my tolerance isn't a typical tolerance. I won't hand you a weed plan for quitting cigarettes. This survey didn't test one.

What Did the New Survey Find About Weed and Quitting Cigarettes? #

Among people trying to quit cigarettes, cannabis was nearly as common as prescription quit medicine, and most of it was THC products. Marijuana Moment published that reading on October 15, 2026. It quotes a paper that went online October 13 in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

Marijuana Moment quotes the paper in one sentence. Cannabis for quitting "was nearly as popular as the use of prescription cessation aids, with products including THC accounting for most of the cannabis use."

Then it gives two percents: 9% were using cannabis to quit cigarettes, and 9.4% were using prescription medications. Those are Marijuana Moment's figures from the paper. I couldn't check them against a free copy, because the journal page is paywalled.

What people were doing	Figure Marijuana Moment reports	Where that figure lives
Using cannabis to quit cigarettes	9%	Marijuana Moment's account of the paper
Using a prescription quit medicine	9.4%	Marijuana Moment's account of the paper
Adults in the survey	2,804	Marijuana Moment's account of the survey
Who actually stayed off cigarettes	Not in the public quotations	No quit-success figure to cite

The paper is a concise research report. Its title is "Cannabis as a Nicotine Cessation Aid: Prevalence of Use and Potential Consequences in a Survey of US Adults." PubMed lists it as PMID 42870176. The free PubMed record had no abstract when I checked.

Those numbers count who tried weed, and say nothing about who stayed quit.

Who Ran the Survey, and Who Was in It? #

Researchers at the San Francisco VA, UCSF, and NYU Langone analyzed a national survey that Ipsos ran. The names and workplaces are on the Springer page, which you can read without the PDF.

Deanna M. Halliday, PhD, and Nhung Nguyen, PhD, PharmD, sit at the UCSF Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education.
Stephanie Wu, BA, is at NYU Langone.
Katherine J. Hoggatt, PhD, MPH, Salomeh Keyhani, MD, MPH, and Beth E. Cohen, MD, MA, are at UCSF and at the San Francisco VA Health Care System.

The same page says the UCSF human-subjects committee exempted Ipsos from a full review, citing 45 CFR 46.104. People were told the purpose but did not sign a consent form, which is normal for an exempt survey. The answers are what people said about their own quit try.

Funding is on that page too. The Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program of the University of California paid for Halliday's work under grant T35FT9823. The same program paid for the data collection under grant T33IR6655, with Beth E. Cohen as the lead. The authors report no conflict of interest.

The paper was received April 2, 2026, accepted September 30, and put online October 13. Parts of the analysis were a poster at the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco in March 2025. This post uses the October paper.

Marijuana Moment says the 2,804 adults smoked cigarettes, vaped nicotine, or did both. The free Springer page doesn't print that head count, so treat 2,804 as Marijuana Moment's number.

How Did Weed Compare With Prescription Quit Medicine? #

Weed and prescription quit medicine landed almost side by side: 9% versus 9.4%, in Marijuana Moment's account. The paper's quoted line calls cannabis "nearly as popular" as those prescription aids. THC products were most of the cannabis in that quote.

In U.S. practice, a prescription quit medicine means a pill a clinician prescribes. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force names two: bupropion, a slow-release pill, and varenicline. Nicotine replacement is a third FDA-approved group: patch, gum, lozenge, inhaler, and nasal spray. Some are over the counter. Some need a prescription, depending on the product and your insurance.

The quotation doesn't say the 9% group quit more often than the 9.4% group. It only says about as many people reached for cannabis.

The paper's quoted line also calls THC "a popular tobacco cessation aid, with use surpassing that of evidence-based interventions." That counts users. Evidence-based means methods with quit trials behind them, and weed isn't one of those.

If you tried a pill and hated it, that was your experience. The survey doesn't grade your pill. It counts how many people said they used cannabis while trying to quit cigarettes.

What About People Trying to Quit Vapes? #

For vaping, cannabis ranked third, behind cold turkey and switching to another nicotine product. That rank is the paper's wording, as Marijuana Moment quotes it. THC products were the main cannabis in that quote.

The same story quotes two more rankings. Cannabis "was more popular than behavioral health interventions." For people trying to quit vaping, it was also "more popular than over-the-counter nicotine replacement therapy and prescription cessation aids."

The story doesn't print the vaping percents, and I won't make any up.

Quit move, vaping group	Rank in the paper, as quoted	A percent in the public story?
Cold turkey	First	No
Another recreational nicotine product	Second	No
Any cannabis, mostly THC	Third	No
Behavioral help	Behind cannabis	No
Over-the-counter nicotine replacement	Behind cannabis	No
Prescription quit medicine	Behind cannabis	No

Cold turkey means stopping with no medicine and no coach. A lot of people try it. In the CDC's 2022 national survey, 53.3% of adults who smoked had tried to quit, and 8.8% had recently quit. Those CDC figures cover cigarettes across the country, a separate list from the vape ranks.

People who used THC to try to quit vaping "reported more trouble concentrating," in the paper's words as Marijuana Moment quotes them. The cigarette group had a longer symptom list. For vapers, the public quotation holds just that one line on focus.

Did Sleep Get Worse for People Using THC? #

Yes, in what people reported. Those who used THC to quit cigarettes described worse withdrawal, and rough sleep was on the list. The same quotation lists feeling upset, thinking about food, feeling restless, and trouble concentrating. Those are the paper's words, as the Marijuana Moment story quotes them.

Here is what the quotation holds:

Worse withdrawal symptoms in the THC group.
Troubled sleep, named in that list.
No percent and no score from a sleep tracker.
A report of how quitting felt. Proving cause would take a different kind of study.

Withdrawal is the body's complaint when nicotine drops. Feeling upset, hungry, or restless, a chopped night, and a foggy shift are classic pieces of it. The paper cites a 2021 revision of the Wisconsin Smoking Withdrawal Scale. I can't see the methods, so I can't swear they used that form. The symptom words in the quotation match the kind of questions that scale asks.

A 2004 mouse paper, which this journal article cites, found that THC reduced some nicotine-withdrawal signs in mice (Balerio and colleagues). Mice in a lab and adults filling out a survey are different tests. The human quotation points at harsher reported symptoms, sleep included.

There isn't enough research yet to turn either paper into a forecast for your own body. If flower has helped you settle, this survey doesn't erase that. It does say the people using THC to quit cigarettes reported a harder withdrawal, and sleep was part of it.

A separate study, out October 9, 2026, tracked sleep with a wrist monitor in middle-aged adults (the paper). I walk through it in the felt-versus-measured sleep post. That study asked how the night scored. This survey asked how quitting nicotine felt.

Does the Survey Show That Weed Helps You Quit? #

No. The public quotations include no quit-success rate. The paper counts how many people said they used cannabis while trying, and it reports withdrawal symptoms. A quit trial would assign people to cannabis or a proven aid, then count who was still off nicotine months later. Nothing like that appears in what Marijuana Moment quotes.

The same lead author published a smaller California survey in 2025 (Halliday, Song, and Nguyen). It had 391 adults. Among people using both cigarettes and cannabis, 30.0% of those planning to quit cigarettes within 30 days also wanted to quit cannabis that month. In that sample, using cannabis to help quit cigarettes did not go with heavier cannabis use. For most of them, the cigarette plan and the cannabis plan were two different wishes.

Survey	Who	What it can tell you
JGIM, online Oct 13, 2026	U.S. adults who smoke, vape, or both. Marijuana Moment says 2,804.	How common cannabis was as a quit try, and which withdrawal symptoms were harsher with THC
Addictive Behaviors Reports, 2025	391 California adults	Whether people quitting cigarettes also planned to quit cannabis. Most dual users did not, inside 30 days

A separate four-country project followed smokers from 2016 to 2018. Driezen and colleagues surveyed adults in Canada (1,455), the United States (892), England (1,416), and Australia (717). Smokers who increased how often they used cannabis were less likely to be quit than smokers who did not use cannabis. The adjusted odds ratio was 0.52 (95% confidence interval 0.31 to 0.86). For a quit that had lasted six months or more, the adjusted odds ratio was 0.30 (95% confidence interval 0.15 to 0.62).

An odds ratio under 1 means a quit was less common in that group, after the researchers adjusted for other factors. So 0.52 means lower odds, and it doesn't convert to a percent. The study watched what people already did and didn't assign cannabis. People who ramp up weed may differ from other smokers in ways the survey couldn't see.

Put together, the new U.S. survey says weed is a common thing to try. The four-country surveys tie rising cannabis use to worse cigarette-quit outcomes. Neither one backs swapping the pack for a jar.

What Quit Methods Have Real Proof? #

For adults who are not pregnant, the proven tools are coaching plus FDA-approved quit medicine. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force gave that a Grade A on January 19, 2021. Grade A means the task force is highly sure the benefit is large.

The FDA-approved list on that page:

Nicotine replacement: patch, gum, lozenge, inhaler, nasal spray.
Bupropion sustained-release, a prescription pill.
Varenicline, a prescription pill.

Pairing a long-acting nicotine product with a short-acting one beat using just one, in the trials the task force reviewed. Varenicline looked stronger than nicotine replacement or bupropion in a smaller set of studies. Cannabis is not on this list. E-cigarettes got a Grade I, which means the evidence is not enough to judge benefit and harm. The task force tells clinicians to send patients to the methods that already have proof.

Coaching has numbers too. A 2017 review of 33 trials (13,762 people), cited on the task force page, compared two kinds of help. One was one-on-one counseling from a cessation specialist. The other was less than 15 minutes of advice. With the counseling, 11.4% quit. After the short advice, 7.7% quit. The relative risk was 1.48, which means quitting was more common in the coached group.

Group classes, in 13 trials (4,395 people), landed at 10.4% quit versus 5.8% with a self-help program. The relative risk was 1.88.

The country-level picture is in the CDC's 2022 cessation report, from the National Health Interview Survey.

2022 U.S. adults who smoke cigarettes	Figure
Current cigarette smoking	11.6% (about 28.8 million adults)
Wanted to quit	67.7%
Tried to quit in the past year	53.3%
Recently quit	8.8%
Used counseling or medicine on a quit try	38.3%
Used medicine	36.3%
Used counseling	7.3%
Used both counseling and medicine	5.3%

Among people who smoked and saw a clinician, about half got advice to quit (50.5%) and about half got help (49.2%). Most quit tries still happen with no coach and no medicine. The new survey shows weed is a popular thing to try, and the CDC table shows the proven tools still go underused.

Where Does a Michigan Smoker Get Free Help? #

Call the Michigan Tobacco Quitlink at 1-800-QUIT-NOW (1-800-784-8669). The state health department page lists it, and the national number routes callers in the state to that same line.

What the page offers:

Free information, a treatment referral, an online program, and text messages, 24 hours a day.
Counseling in English, Spanish, and Arabic.
Spanish line: 1-855-335-3569.
Free one-on-one coaching, online coaching, and nicotine replacement for qualifying Michigan residents.
The page says free counseling and nicotine replacement "may be available to certain callers," so it isn't a promise to every caller.

Michigan Medicaid covers all seven FDA-approved quit medications. You still need a prescription from your primary care clinician, even for the patch. Most of the Medicaid managed-care plans partner with the Quitlink. The customer-service number on the back of your card can start that.

If you are pregnant, the same Quitlink has a prenatal track with coaches trained for pregnancy. The task force says the evidence on quit pills in pregnancy is not enough to judge. Behavioral help has the clearer record. Tell the coach you're pregnant before you start any product.

Coaches on the Quitlink have at least a bachelor's degree and training in tobacco dependence. Many are certified tobacco treatment specialists. It runs by phone and web.

What Do the Small CBD Studies Show? #

They are early lab tests and one-week pilots, and they don't show that CBD gets people off cigarettes. Divine Toke sells no CBD oil, so I have no bottle to point you at.

Two human studies come up every time this question hits a group chat.

Morgan and colleagues, 2013, in Addictive Behaviors, split 24 smokers at random. Twelve got a CBD inhaler and twelve got a fake one. They used it for one week when the urge hit. The CBD group cut the number of cigarettes by about 40% during that week. The placebo group didn't drop. The abstract says some of the effect was still there at follow-up. The authors called the data preliminary.

Hindocha and colleagues, 2018, in Addiction, studied 30 dependent smokers in a UK lab. Each person did a normal-smoking visit and overnight-abstinence visits. At one abstinence visit they took 800 mg of CBD by mouth, and at the other a placebo. CBD pulled attention away from cigarette pictures and made those pictures less pleasant. Craving didn't fall, and withdrawal didn't fall. Cigarettes smoked weren't the outcome. One lab morning isn't a quit.

Study	People	What moved	What did not
Morgan 2013, one-week inhaler	24 smokers	About 40% fewer cigarettes during the week	Not a test of who was still quit months later
Hindocha 2018, 800 mg by mouth, once	30 dependent smokers	Attention to cigarette cues, and how pleasant the pictures felt	Craving and withdrawal

If a label says CBD stops nicotine craving, these two papers don't back it. Hindocha measured craving and found no change. Morgan measured cigarettes smoked in one week and called for more study.

What If the Weed Is Rolled With Tobacco? #

A blunt wrap can still carry nicotine after the tobacco filler is gone. A 2016 lab test of five blunt cigars found 1.2 to 6.0 mg of nicotine in the wrapper alone (Peters and colleagues). The wrapper was 8% to 18% of the cigar's weight, depending on the product. The test weighed what was in the leaf. It didn't measure how much nicotine a person absorbed. That depends on the wrap, the puffs, and how far down you smoke it.

A spliff, sometimes called a mull, is cannabis mixed with tobacco in the same roll. The tobacco brings its nicotine along.

A 2017 review pulled 45 papers on blunts, spliffs, and mulled cigarettes (Schauer, Rosenberry, and Peters, Addictive Behaviors). Most were observational studies, where researchers watch what people do, or interview studies. Eleven looked at spliffs. The pattern across those papers was more dependence signals for nicotine and for cannabis, plus a sense that the mix felt stronger. The review says the long-term disease studies are thin, and I won't invent a cancer percent it doesn't have.

What you can use on a job site:

A blunt still brings nicotine with the cannabis.
If the goal is fewer cigarettes, a tobacco wrap works against it.
Mixing the two also stacks smoke. Cigarette smoke drives heart disease, lung disease, and early death, which is why the CDC cessation report treats quitting as disease prevention.
THC can speed the pulse in the first hour after you smoke, according to the American Heart Association's 2020 statement. The full paper is Page and colleagues in Circulation. How that feels, and when it is a stop sign, is in why cannabis makes your heart race.

Nicotine already puts a load on the heart, and a fast cannabis pulse adds to it. Anyone with chest pain, a prior heart attack, or a rhythm problem should take that stack to a clinician first.

Which Jobs Still Smoke the Most? #

Construction and the repair trades topped the most recent CDC job breakdown I could find, and those are everyday jobs in Detroit. The data years are 2014 through 2016. That report has no 2026 head count by trade.

The CDC's MMWR from October 27, 2017 used the National Health Interview Survey. Among working adults:

15.4% smoked cigarettes.
22.1% used any tobacco product.
Any tobacco use in the construction industry was 34.3%. Use of two or more tobacco products was 7.1% there, the highest industry figure in that report.
Installation, maintenance, and repair occupations were at 37.2% for any tobacco, the highest occupation figure.
Education services were at 11.0% for any tobacco.

A construction-only paper used the same 2014-2016 surveys (Syamlal, King, and Mazurek). Cigarette smoking was 24.4% of U.S. construction workers, and any tobacco product was 35.1%. The paper's estimate covers about 10.2 million construction workers.

By 2022, cigarette smoking among all U.S. adults was down to 11.6%, in the cessation MMWR. The older worker report still showed a wide job gap, with education services at 11.0% and the trades far above it. That fits a Detroit road crew or plant floor.

Breaks, cold mornings, coworkers smoking, and a site you can't leave can all get in the way of a counseling call. The Quitlink runs by phone, so a break can be the call.

What Should a Detroit Shift Worker Do With This? #

Treat the survey as a head count, and use the quitline if you want a method with quit trials behind it. The line runs 24 hours a day, so a 3 a.m. start in Detroit doesn't lock you out.

A workable order:

If you want off cigarettes, call 1-800-QUIT-NOW and say you are in Michigan. Ask what a qualifying caller can get. Coaching and nicotine replacement are on the table for some residents.
Tell your clinician. Heart history, lung history, pregnancy, and the rest of your pill list belong in that talk. How a tradesperson talks to a Michigan doctor about cannabis is the script for the weed half.
If your plan is "I'll just smoke weed instead," remember the THC group reported worse withdrawal, sleep included. Flower at night is its own question, and the felt-versus-measured sleep post covers it.
If weed becomes an all-day stand-in for the pack, you've traded one daily habit for another. The tolerance-break post covers why a daily cannabis habit gets quieter over time.
A Detroit employer can still test. The rules are in the drug-testing post.
Skip blunts if the goal is less nicotine. The wrap still has nicotine in it.

Keep taking what your doctor prescribed. The patch is a quit medicine with trials behind it. If flower has helped you sleep, there isn't enough research yet to tell you it hasn't. The group result still stands, though: troubled sleep was on the harsher list.

FAQ #

Can weed help you quit smoking cigarettes? #

The new survey doesn't show that it can. It shows a lot of people are trying it. Marijuana Moment says 9% of people trying to quit cigarettes were using cannabis, next to 9.4% on a prescription quit medicine. The public quotations do not say who was still off cigarettes later.

What percent used cannabis versus a prescription quit pill? #

9% cannabis and 9.4% prescription medicine, in Marijuana Moment's account of the paper. Those percents are not printed on the free Springer page. The paper's quoted sentence says cannabis was "nearly as popular" as prescription cessation aids. THC products were most of the cannabis use.

Did people who used THC sleep worse? #

They reported worse nicotine withdrawal, and rough sleep was on the list. The same quotation lists feeling upset, thinking about food, feeling restless, and trouble concentrating. There is no sleep-lab number and no percent in that sentence. A separate October 9 study, covered in the felt-versus-measured sleep post, used a wrist monitor and asked a different question.

Is cannabis an FDA-approved quit medicine? #

No. The USPSTF recommendation from January 19, 2021 lists nicotine replacement, bupropion sustained-release, and varenicline. It gives coaching plus those medicines a Grade A for adults who are not pregnant. Cannabis is absent from that list.

What should I use if I actually want off cigarettes? #

Coaching plus an FDA-approved quit medicine, if you are not pregnant. In 2022, only 5.3% of U.S. adults on a recent quit try used both counseling and medicine, according to the CDC. Individual counseling quit rates in the trials the task force cites were 11.4%, versus 7.7% with a very short advice chat.

How do I reach the Michigan quitline? #

Call 1-800-QUIT-NOW (1-800-784-8669). The Michigan Tobacco Quitlink answers in English, and the Spanish line is 1-855-335-3569. Counseling is also offered in Arabic. Qualifying callers may get free coaching and nicotine replacement. Medicaid here covers all seven FDA-approved quit medications with a prescription.

Does CBD stop cigarette craving? #

A human lab test found no drop in craving. Hindocha and colleagues gave 30 smokers 800 mg of CBD by mouth, once. Attention to cigarette pictures changed. Craving and withdrawal stayed put. A 2013 one-week pilot in 24 smokers saw about 40% fewer cigarettes with a CBD inhaler (Morgan and colleagues). The authors called that preliminary. Divine Toke sells no CBD oil.

If I smoke blunts, am I still getting nicotine? #

You can be. Wrapper tests on five blunt cigars found 1.2 to 6.0 mg of nicotine in the leaf wrap (Peters and colleagues). That number is what was in the leaf. A blood level would take a different study. A spliff mixes loose tobacco into the roll. If less nicotine is the goal, a tobacco wrap works against you.

Which jobs still have the highest smoking rates? #

In the 2014-2016 worker data, construction and repair trades were at the top. The CDC MMWR found any-tobacco use at 34.3% in construction and 37.2% in installation, maintenance, and repair. A construction-only paper found 24.4% cigarette smoking (Syamlal and colleagues). Those years are older than the 2022 all-adult smoking rate of 11.6%. The gap between the trades and other jobs is why this matters on a job site.

Should I tell my doctor before I swap cigarettes for weed? #

Yes. Heart disease, pregnancy, and the rest of your medicines change the stakes. THC can speed the pulse after you smoke, per the American Heart Association. The practical version is why your heart races after cannabis. The talk itself is how a tradesperson talks to a doctor about cannabis.

Will rising weed use make a cigarette quit harder? #

Smokers who increased cannabis use were less likely to be quit, in a four-country study. Driezen and colleagues found adjusted odds of 0.52 for being quit, compared with smokers who did not use cannabis. For a quit that had lasted at least six months, the odds were 0.30. That study watched people and didn't assign weed, so it can't say weed caused the harder quits.

Can my Detroit job still test me if I use weed to quit? #

Yes. Adult-use cannabis can be legal and a workplace test can still cost you the job. Read the drug-testing post before you treat a jar as the quit plan on a tested site.

What Should You Take From This Survey? #

Weed was about as common as a prescription quit pill, and the THC group reported worse withdrawal. Coaching plus an FDA-approved medicine is the path with trials behind it.

If you are in Michigan and want that path, call 1-800-QUIT-NOW. The Quitlink page says what qualifying callers can get. Your clinician should hear the plan too, especially if your heart, your lungs, or a pregnancy is in the picture.

I grow sun-grown flower in Michigan, and Divine Toke sells it by mail from Detroit. There's no storefront, and we sell no CBD oil or nicotine products. Flower won't finish a cigarette quit.

More on the nights and the body, if you want them:

This article is for educational purposes only and is not medical advice. Always consult your healthcare provider before starting any new wellness routine.

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Using Weed to Quit Cigarettes: What a New Survey Found

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