Even for smokers who don't plan to quit, e-cigarettes can help kick the habit.
Brian Doctrow, Ph.D., of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, recently commented in the "NIH Research Matters" section, a weekly updated review of highlights from peer-reviewed studies from these institutions. There, he said, "The use of e-cigarettes may cause some people to abandon traditional cigarettes."
Doctrow cites A study "E-cigarette Use and Smoking Cessation among Adult Smokers who had never originally planned to quit," published in JAMA and conducted by Karin A. Kasza of the Division of Behavioral Health at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in New Buffalo, York, and other prominent researchers, Including Raymond Niaura. Dr Brian Doctrow is one of a group of researchers who don't get carried away by denialism and are willing to accept evidence.
Statements about the use of e-cigarettes
"The health risks associated with smoking are well known. These include lung disease, cardiovascular disease and cancer. E-cigarettes use battery power to heat a nicotine-containing solution into an inhalable vapor. In October 2021, the FDA approved three e-cigarette products through the Premarket Tobacco Product Application Pathway. This approach requires that the product be suitable to protect public health. The FDA has rejected marketing requests for hundreds of other e-cigarette products.
"Studies have been investigating whether e-cigarettes can help smokers quit traditional cigarettes. Most of these studies focused on smokers who already planned to quit. But those who had no plans to quit tended to smoke the most cigarettes per day and were often at the highest risk of health problems from smoking.
"We found evidence that e-cigarette use may have a positive impact on this hard-to-reach group of heavy smokers."
"A team of researchers led by Dr. Karin Kasza and Dr. Andrew Hyland of roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center have been examining data collected in the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) study between 2014 and 2019. PATH is a long-term study of tobacco use patterns and health outcomes in the United States. It was funded by NIH's National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the FDA's Center for Tobacco Products.
"The team, which included scientists from NIDA and the FDA, has previously reported that daily smokers who don't have a quit plan are more likely to change their quit plan if they use e-cigarettes daily. In their new study, the researchers examined whether e-cigarette use was associated with quitting smoking among daily smokers who were not planning to quit. The results appear on JAMA Network Open on December 28, 2021.
"The researchers looked at 1,600 adults who smoked daily, did not use e-cigarettes and had no intention of quitting at the start of the study. About 6 percent quit smoking completely during the study period. Another 4.5 percent reduced their smoking habit to less than one cigarette a day.
"The team compared the quit rates of e-cigarette users to those who did not use e-cigarettes. People who used e-cigarettes daily at the end of the study were eight times more likely to quit smoking completely. They were also almost 10 times more likely to quit smoking every day.
"No association was observed between quitting smoking and frequency of e-cigarette use, other than daily. The analysis took into account differences in gender, race and ethnicity, age, education and income. The researchers also controlled for the number of cigarettes smoked per day at the start of the study.
"We can't determine from the data whether e-cigarette use causes people to stop smoking traditional cigarettes. More research is needed to understand how e-cigarette use affects people's willingness to quit smoking. But the findings suggest that smokers who are not planning to quit should be considered when weighing the risks and benefits of e-cigarettes.
"We found evidence that e-cigarette use may have a positive impact on this hard-to-reach population of heavy smokers," Hyland said. "To really understand the health impact of vaping on the U.S. population, we need to consider those who have no intention of quitting."