Do electronic cigarettes help to quit smoking?

Switching smokers to e-cigarettes could help them steer clear of regular cigarettes, which generally contain more harmful chemicals when burned, but a study by the US Food and Drug Administration showed opposite results.

The study confirmed that people who quit smoking and switched to another form of tobacco use, including e-cigarettes, were more likely to relapse to regular cigarettes after a year than those who quit smoking completely.

Trying to quit smoking? E-cigarettes won’t help, and may do more harm to lungs and make you relapse, study suggests https://t.co/th97f5mprn

— South China Morning Post (@SCMPNews) October 26, 2021

Researchers followed 13,604 identified smokers between 2013 and 2015 for two years and asked participants to complete surveys about their use of 12 different tobacco products, such as cigars, pipes and hookahs.

The study’s first author, Dr. John Pearce, a professor emeritus in the Department of Family Medicine at UCSD, said:

“If switching to e-cigarettes was an effective way to quit smoking, then those who switched to e-cigarettes should have had significantly lower relapse rates for cigarette smoking, but we found no evidence for this.”

However, 41.5% of people who initially quit smoking and then switched to another smoking method such as e-cigarettes were able to effectively stop returning to regular cigarettes.

E-cigarettes are still relatively new, so scientists continue to learn more about any long-term health effects they may cause.

The study confirms that e-cigarettes contain fewer harmful chemicals than regular cigarettes, but the CDC notes that e-cigarettes can carry cancer-causing chemicals.

Newer models of e-cigarettes use nicotine salts that allow higher levels of nicotine to be inhaled while reducing throat irritation. Experts say this feature could increase nicotine dependence in some people.