Baccari told the Senate committee: “Penn State University, Dec. 17 of 2014, found that electronic cigarettes are far less addictive than cigarettes.”
Planet of the Vapes has covered many pieces of research supporting the efficacy of vaping, using ecigs to quit smoking, and many experts put this down to the fact that ecigs are less addictive. In relation to using ecigs as quitting tools, we quoted Professor Robert West saying: “We found that those using e-cigarettes were about 60% more likely to still be non-smoking.”
Professor Etter carried out the first research into this area in 2011. He found that mainly former smokers used ecigs as an aid to quit smoking, to avoid relapse and deal with cravings. His conclusion was that vapers found vaping useful, satisfactory and efficacious.
Jonathan Foulds carried out the research quoted by White Horse’s Baccari. Foulds said: “We found that e-cigarettes appear to be less addictive than tobacco cigarettes in a large sample of long-term users,” at the presentation of the findings. “We think this is because they're getting less nicotine from the e-cigs than they were getting from cigarettes,” he continued. “It has the potential to do good and help a lot of people quit.”
Fould’s work looked at the responses of 3,600 electronic cigarette users, an extensive sample. 86% reported having strong urges to smoke but this dropped to 12% when using ecigs.
Foulds is reported as adding: “Maybe in five years, these people will be just as addicted to their e-cigarettes but based on the data that we have in this study, we got a significantly lower dependence score than for conventional cigarettes.”
Following Etter’s work in 2011, Doctors Goniewicz & Hajek found similar results. In their paper titled Patterns of electronic cigarette use and user beliefs about their safety and benefits they wrote: “The participants primarily used e-cigarettes as a stop-smoking aid or as an alternative to conventional cigarettes, and the majority reported that they successfully stopped smoking.”
In 2014, Etter released Dependence levels in users of electronic cigarettes, nicotine gums and tobacco cigarettes. In it he wrote: “We found that e-cigarettes users were less addicted to e-cigarettes than smokers were addicted to tobacco cigarettes and nicotine gum users to the nicotine gum.”
Dave Cross
Journalist at POTVDave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.
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