Accidental Quitters
Vaping works as a smoking quit tool even for smokers who didn’t plan on quitting, new study shows.
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by Dave Cross
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The University of East Anglia explains in a press release: “Even people who didn’t want to stop smoking, have eventually quit because they found vaping more enjoyable.”
Dr Caitlin Notley, who works at the university’s Norwich Medical School, said: “E-cigarettes are at least 95 per cent less harmful than tobacco smoking, and they are now the most popular aid to quitting smoking in the UK. However the idea of using e-cigarettes to stop smoking, and particularly long-term use, remains controversial.”
“We wanted to find out about how people use e-cigarettes to quit smoking – and whether vaping supports long-term smoking abstinence.”
The team conducted in-depth interviews with vapers, asking them about individual tobacco smoking histories, prior quit attempts and how they started vaping. The team were also interested to find out about what vape equipment was used, vapers’ preferred flavours, the strength of the juices and if they had started to vaping as part of a quit smoking attempt.
Dr Notley added: “We found that vaping may support long-term smoking abstinence. Not only does it substitute many of the physical, psychological, social and cultural elements of cigarette smoking, but it is pleasurable in its own right, as well as convenient and cheaper than smoking.”
“Our study group also felt better in themselves – they noticed better respiratory function, taste and smell. But the really interesting thing we found was that vaping may also encourage people who don’t even want to stop smoking, to eventually quit.”
Among the plethora of vapers who said they had been smoking a long time and had failed to quit many times before using ecigs, almost one fifth said they enjoyed smoking and weren’t looking to stop using tobacco.
“These were our accidental quitters. They hadn’t intended to quit smoking and had tried vaping on a whim, or because they had been offered it by friends. They went on to like it, and only then saw it as a potential substitute for smoking,” explain Dr Notley.
“Many people talked about how they saw vaping was a no pressure approach to quitting. While most of the group switched quickly and completely from smoking to vaping, some found themselves using both cigarettes and vaping, and then sliding towards stopping smoking.”
“We found that people did occasionally relapse with a cigarette, mainly due to social or emotional reasons, but it didn’t necessarily lead to a full relapse. This study suggests that vaping is a viable long-term substitute for smoking, with substantial implications for tobacco harm reduction.”
The research: https://harmreductionjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12954-0...
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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