Data From England Suggest E-Cigarettes Help Smokers Quit

Boston University public health professor Michael
Siegel
highlights new survey data from England that show rising
e-cigarette use has been accompanied by a notable increase in
smoking cessation. According to the Smoking
Toolkit Study, e-cigarette use in England has been rising since
2011, when the survey began. Meanwhile, the percentage of smokers
who reported quitting in the previous year rose from 4.6 percent in
2011 to 6.2 percent in 2012. The cessation rate was 6.1 percent
last year and 8.7 percent in the first quarter of this year. During
the same period the success rate of smokers who tried to quit rose
from 13.7 percent to 21.4 percent.

These trends, Siegel says, suggest that “electronic cigarettes
are helping to accelerate smoking cessation, rather than hinder
it.” The researchers conclude that “evidence does not support the
view that electronic cigarettes are undermining motivation to quit
or reduction in smoking prevalence.” The also note that “use of
e-cigarettes by never smokers remains extremely rare,” which
deflates the fear that e-cigarettes are a
gateway to smoking.

What about the
JAMA study that supposedly showed e-cigarettes do not
help smokers quit? Rachel Grana and two ther researchers at UCSF’s
Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education interviewed 949
smokers in 2011 and again in 2012. In the first survey, 88 of the
smokers reported that they had used e-cigarettes. In the second
survey 10.2 percent of those smokers had quit, compared to 13.8
percent of the other subjects. Grana and her co-authors concluded
that “our data add to the current evidence that e-cigarettes may
not increase rates of smoking cessation.”

But as Siegel
points out, Grana et al. made no attempt to focus on smokers
who used e-cigarettes in an effort to cut down or quit. They
included any smoker who had tried the product, even if only out of
curiosity. In fact, Siegel notes, the survey results indicate that
“92% of the e-cigarette users in the study were not trying to
quit.” He concludes that the study is “complete garbage,” “truly an
example of bogus or junk science.”