Advertising for Smoking Cessation Products

I feel like I saw or read something about related results a couple weeks ago, but a study just published in the Journal of Political Economy found that advertising for smoking cessation products encouraged smokers to quit. The abstract states:

We study the impact of smoking cessation product advertising. To measure potential exposure, we link survey data on magazine-reading habits and smoking behavior with an archive of print advertisements. We find that smokers who are exposed to more advertising are more likely to attempt to quit and to successfully quit. While some increased quitting involves product purchases, we find that product advertisements also prompt cold turkey quitting. Identifying the causal impact of advertising is difficult because advertisers target consumers. Although reverse causality could bias our estimates upward, our baseline results are not sensitive to a series of checks.

I think the big, interesting finding here is that some of the people decide to quit cold turkey. While that's certainly not what the advertisers are shooting for, it's a clear benefit for public health. There are plenty of arguments over the benefits/negatives of direct-to-consumer (DTC) pharmaceutical advertising, this (at least to me) is another clear point in favor of such ads. More fuel for the fire...