Donna.
Your extra information leads me to believe that the nicotine patches would be far better. Yesterday was tough for me as it would have been my Mom's 88th birthday except that she died in 2001 and as usual I was wracked with "shouldve/couldves" on what we as her children did for her health (hence my over the top suggestion). She smoked cigarettes from the age of 14 and never got any type of cancer, not head and neck, and not even lung cancer. Smoking is so bad however that it did cause emphysema and she couldn't catch her breath enough so she ended up on oxygen the last year of her life. We started buying those stop smoking nicotine patches for Christmas and they helped her. As I said, quitting smoking is the very best thing and it sounds like quitting is doable for your Mom. The patches are available OTC
Charm