More promising is a vaccine that will prevent nicotine from arousing the brain's pleasure sensors.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse, a division of the National Institutes of Health, gave Nabi BioPharmaceuticals a $10-million grant in 2009 to take its anti-nicotine vaccine, NicVAX, to Phase III clinical trials. After disappointing results from two Phase III trials, however, NicVAX research was put on hold in November 2011.

Any public release of a nicotine vaccine is years away, but the concept "holds a lot of potential," says the NCI's Augustson. "I don't think there's going to be a magic bullet. Smokers may still have to do work."

7. Don't limit yourself to one method to help you quit smoking.
Smoking is such a pernicious addiction that no one treatment has produced a quit rate of more than 30%, Augustson says.

But combining NRTs or medications may help overcome the odds, and help you avoid the dangers of smoking, studies show.

Jorenby, for example, was one of the lead researchers on a clinical trial that compared several smoking-cessation therapies. The results, published last year in the Archives of General Psychiatry, found that combining the patch and lozenge was the most effective method to quit smoking.

The study's 1,504 smokers were randomly assigned to one of six treatment groups: nicotine lozenge alone, nicotine patch alone, bupropion alone, patch plus nicotine lozenge, bupropion plus nicotine lozenge or placebo. They also received counseling.

After six months, those using the patch and lozenge had a 40% quit rate. (That percentage, however, was expected to decline over time, researchers said.) This may be due to the steady nicotine supply from the patch and periodic boosts from lozenges, according to the scientists.