Study Finds E-Cigarette Users Are More Likely to Stop Smoking Than People Who Use Other Methods to Quit

According to a study
reported today in the journal Addiction, people who try to
quit smoking with the aid of electronic cigarettes are twice as
likely to succeed as people who use nicotine replacement products
such as gum or patches. The researchers, led by University College
London health economist Robert West (editor in chief of
 Addiction), surveyed a representative sample of the
British population, focusing on 5,863 subjects who had tried to
quit in the previous year unaided, with e-cigarettes, or with
over-the-counter nicotine replacement therapy (NRT). At the time of
the survey, 20 percent of the e-cigarette users were no longer
smoking, compared to 10.1 percent of NRT users and 15.4 percent of
those who tried to quit without any sort of nicotine replacement.
Adjusting for various possible confounding variables, including
age, sex, socioeconomic status, and strength of nicotine
dependence, West et al. found that e-cigarette users were about 60
percent more likely to succeed than either of the other two
groups.

The quit rate among e-cigarette users in this study is
one-quarter the rate found in a recent
survey of 19,000 e-cigarette users. But the sample for the
latter study was drawn mainly from participants in online
e-cigarette forums, who are especially enthusiastic about the
product and therefore more likely to have successfully switched
from smoking to vaping. Since West et al. used a random sample of
smokers who had tried to quit, their results are more
representative.

West et al.’s results indicate that e-cigarettes have a bigger
edge over NRTs than suggested by a
randomized trial
reported in The Lancet last year. In that study, the
six-month quit rate for e-cigarette users was 7.3 percent, compared
to 5.8 percent for patch users. The difference between the quit
rates in the two studies might be due to confounding variables that
West et al. did take into account. Then again, if e-cigarettes are
especially effective for people with certain traits, a randomized
trial would obscure that fact. West
argues that clinical trials are not appropriate for measuring
the effectiveness of e-cigarettes as a smoking cessation aid
because subjects who do not like the treatment to which they are
assigned tend to drop out. He also suggests that the e-cigarette
market, which is currently shifting from cigarette-like products
with disposable cartridges to vaping devices with refillable tanks,
is changing so rapidly that experimental results may be obsolete by
the time they are published.

Whether or not you agree with West, it is plainly absurd to
continue claiming, as
CDC officials do, that the harm-reducing benefits of
e-cigarettes are merely “hypothetical.” Based on the evidence
collected so far, e-cigarettes are at least as effective as the
NRTs favored by the CDC. “E-cigarettes could substantially improve
public health because of their widespread appeal and the huge
health gains associated with stopping smoking,” West says, “It
is not clear whether long-term use of e-cigarettes carries health
risks, but from what is known about the contents of the vapor,
these will be much less than from smoking.” While “some public
health experts have expressed concern that widespread use of
e-cigarettes could ‘re-normalize’ smoking,” he adds, “we are
tracking this very closely and see no evidence of it. Smoking rates
in England are declining, quitting rates are increasing and regular
e-cigarette use among never smokers is negligible.”