The Michigan Department of Community Health’s Tobacco Quit Line has been so successful that the state shut it down. After announcing early last week the Quit Line would be offering Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) to qualified individuals, the help line was flooded with calls.  

From a press release from MDCH:

Since MDCH announced on Wednesday that it was launching the free NRT campaign through the end of April, the Quit Line received more than 65,600 callers in five days. The Quit Line, which offers enrollees a two-month supply of either nicotine patches, gum or lozenges, received more than 21,000 calls on the first day and 2,169 have enrolled in the program so far.

Compare those numbers to the last free NRT campaign in August when 1,320 people called and 1,110 completed enrollment and in September when 18,724 people called and 2,114 completed enrollment.

The program costs the state $1.335 million to administer, with the feds kicking in $435,000 of that sum, says James McCurtis, spokesperson for MDCH. The program will be back in September.

With higher cigarette prices coming April 1 (due to a new federal excise tax which was part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act), the state was preparing for a deluge of people looking to quit. Sadly, with the Quit Line shut down, the state has nothing to offer — at this point.

“We are sitting at the table, trying to see what we can do,” said McCurtis. But McCurtis also said residents shouldn’t hold their breath for stimulus money to be in play. “Stimulus money is needed for a lot of other services as well — Medicaid and all sorts of other services. We are trying to see if there are any other solutions, but there are no guarantees.”