People who use e-cigarettes to help them stop smoking are no more likely to be abstinent a year later than those who use alternative aids or nothing at all. These individuals are also more likely to remain dependent on nicotine.
That’s what John Pierce at the University of California, San Diego, and his colleagues found when they assessed attempts to quit smoking by thousands of people in the US. But the findings don’t necessarily mean that e-cigarettes won’t help some people quit, argue researchers who weren’t involved in the work.
Pierce and his colleagues assessed data collected as part of
a study that has recruited around 49,000 people across the US. In one piece of research, the team looked at the outcomes of 32,320 adults who were asked about their use of tobacco products. A year later, each person was asked if they had attempted to quit smoking, the methods they had used and whether they had been successful. The following year, they were asked whether they had remained abstinent for 12 months or more.
Of the 9021 people who initially said they
smoked on a daily basis, 2770 had attempted to quit. Around 24 per cent used e-cigarettes as a cessation aid, while about 19 per cent used other aids, such as clinically approved drugs and other nicotine replacement therapies, like patches, sprays and lozenges. The remainder of the group didn’t use any products.
But the choice of product didn’t seem to make a difference to how successful their attempt to quit was. Only around 10 per cent of people managed to stay abstinent from tobacco products for 12 or more months by the end of the period, regardless of whether they had used e-cigarettes, other products or nothing at all. Around 82 per cent of those who had attempted to quit were still smoking by the end of the study period.
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