E-cigarettes No Guarantee Against Relapse for Smokers

Oct. 22, 2021 — Former people who smoke who use e-cigarettes are simply as more likely to mild again up, in comparison with these utilizing different nicotine options, new proof reveals.

A latest examine confirmed that individuals who give up cigarette smoking after which began utilizing digital cigarettes have been simply as more likely to return to conventional tobacco cigarettes as individuals who switched to nicotine gum and different merchandise.

Quitting tobacco utterly was the simplest technique. Overall, use of e-cigarettes or one other tobacco product was related to an 8.5% higher probability {that a} latest quitter would smoke once more, in comparison with individuals who went “cold turkey.”

The examine was printed Oct. 19 in JAMA Network Open.

Interestingly, the findings come the week after the FDA introduced its first e-cigarette authorization for 3 Vuse tobacco-flavored vaping merchandise. Data from producer R.J. Reynolds confirmed the merchandise “may gain advantage addicted grownup people who smoke who swap to those merchandise — both utterly or with a major discount in cigarette consumption — by decreasing their publicity to dangerous chemical compounds,” the FDA stated in a information launch.

Electronic Cessation?

“We have been very stunned by the FDA’s permission to permit some e-cigarettes to be marketed to assist people who smoke give up,” stated John P. Pierce, PhD, lead writer of the smoking relapse examine.

The present paper asks a special query about e-cigarettes, in comparison with two earlier research by Pierce and colleagues. A December 2020 examine evaluated e-cigarettes as a long-term help to give up smoking. Another examine, in September 2020, in contrast the usage of e-cigarettes, different aids, and quitting tobacco chilly turkey.

But “none of our work has been capable of finding a profit to utilizing e-cigarettes for cessation,” stated Pierce, a professor emeritus within the Department of Family Medicine and Public Health on the University of California, San Diego.

So the researchers determined to check if individuals who already give up smoking have been extra doubtless to return to smoking inside 1 12 months — to relapse — in the event that they switched to e-cigarettes, a product like nicotine patches, or simply give up altogether.

Almost 1 in 4 Quitters Switched to e-Cigarettes

Pierce and colleagues studied 13,604 cigarette people who smoke from the U.S. Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health examine. At the primary annual follow-up, 9.4% had lately give up.

Among that group of 1,228 latest quitters, 37% switched to a non-cigarette tobacco product, together with 23% who switched to e-cigarettes. The remaining 63% stayed tobacco-free. Non-Hispanic whites, individuals who have been most tobacco-dependent, and people with an annual earnings higher than $35,000 have been extra more likely to swap to e-cigarettes.

To complicate issues, some folks each smoke cigarettes and use e-cigarettes the place smoking is just not allowed. But that doesn’t depend because the “harm reduction” goal of switching to a supposedly safer product, Pierce and colleagues say.

“The potential for hurt discount with e-cigarettes requires that these trying to give up efficiently swap utterly away from cigarettes and never turn into dual-product customers.”

A ‘Hotly Debated’ Topic

Meanwhile, the controversy of e-cigarettes as a option to give up smoking continues.

The query “continues to be hotly debated,” Terry F. Pechacek, PhD, writes in a commentary printed with the examine.

“These new outcomes add to the rising physique of proof from randomized trials and observational research inspecting the impact of switching to e-cigarettes on smoking cessation,” says Pechacek, a professor of well being administration and coverage at Georgia State University in Atlanta.

The examine, he says, “offers further proof suggesting that switching to e-cigarettes in an actual world setting may end in greater relapse charges again to smoking.”