42% of US smokers successfully quit with E-Cigarettes

Despite the fact that vaping is still unrecognised as a smoking cessation tool in the US, it seems that the public's actions drastically  contradict political opinion.

The Department of Family Medicine and Public Health of the University of California and the National Cancer Institute recently announced the results of a domestic study of US smokers, with the aim to better understand what effect e-cigarettes are having on cessation rates.

It took place over a period of 2 years, observing both smokers using e-cigarettes solely and those who were dual users between cigarettes and vaping devices. It was found that more than one in three smokers used vaping in their last attempt to quit, while a quarter of the study used e-cigarettes exclusively to quit.

A total of 2028 smokers were observed, and it was discovered that 42.4% of long term vaping users were able to quit cigarette usage altogether. It was also found that e-cigarette users saw a 72.6% rise to their frequency of quitting attempts when compared to other cessation aids like gum and nicotine patches.

Other findings include:

  • 96.8% long-term users answered “YES” when they were asked if they had used e-cigarettes for at least 10 days in their life against 67.4% short-term users (p<0.001)
  • 96.2% long-term users perceived e-cigarettes as less harmful than cigarettes
  • 67.3% long-term users reported that they had used e-cigarettes daily for at least 1 month against
  • 32.2% of short-term users (p<0.001) 44% e-cigarette users among smokers in 2012 were still using e-cigarettes 2 years later
  • 40.1% non-users reported that they had tried e-cigarettes at some point in their life

With clear evidence of success within a representative study, showing that e-cigarettes had nearly 12 times the effectiveness in aiding cessation when compared with other means of nicotine replacement therapy, it's surprising that the US government still refuses to acknowledge the benefits of vaping.

But with more and more research jumping into the limelight, it is only a matter of time before public opinion and expert evidence begins to sway political functions.

Hopefully.