ASH Briefs About Cochrane
Action on Smoking and Health has released a briefing paper covering the latest evidence obtained from the Cochrane systematic living review on vaping
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by Dave Cross
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Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) has released a briefing paper covering the latest evidence obtained from the Cochrane systematic living review on vaping. The paper covers how long people continue to use e-cigarettes after a quit attempt, the impact and role of e-cigarette flavourings in supporting people to quit, and whether levels of potentially harmful chemicals and toxicants vary between people who have quit smoking and switched completely to e-cigarettes, those who continue to smoke, those who vape and smoke, and those who quit without vapes.
The briefing paper summarises the findings as follows:
How long do people continue to vape after switching from cigarettes?
ASH says: “Among people given an e-cigarette to help them stop smoking, just over half (54%) were still using an e-cigarette 6 months later. Among those who had successfully stopped smoking, the proportion still using e-cigarettes 6 months later was even greater at 70%.”
The Cochrane Review finds no evidence of serious harm from vapes but ASH still worries that “reliable evidence on their long-term safety is still lacking”.
Any long-term use risk from vaping must surely be outweighed by the known dangers of the long-term smoking it has replaced. Given that we know vaping is at least 95% safer than smoking, it stands to reason that the long-term risk posed is at least 95% less.
How important are vape flavours to successfully stopping smoking?
The Cochrane Review has found that there is evidence in favour of eliquid flavours but, as ASH happily points out, “strong evidence on the impact e-cigarette flavourings have on someone's likelihood of stopping smoking is still lacking.”
Given how supportive the anti-smoking charity is of the idea of restricting vape flavours, it would be nice if they relied on evidence and not the absence of evidence to support their case.
What are the potentially harmful chemicals and toxicants in vapes?
“Levels of carbon monoxide (CO) were significantly lower among people who stopped smoking using an
e-cigarette than among people who continued to solely smoke combustible cigarettes or in people using e-cigarettes while continuing to smoke,” says ASH.
In addition:
- Levels of other tobacco-associated toxicants were significantly lower among people using vapes compared to people who continued smoking.
- Levels of most toxicants were lower among people just vaping than in people dual using both vapes and tobacco cigarettes.
ASH adds: “These findings show the potential benefits of switching to e-cigarettes for reducing exposure to potentially harmful toxicants.”
Summary statements from ASH about vaping research evidence:
- Ecigs are an effective stop smoking tool
- Vapes are less harmful than cigarettes
- If on-going vaping prevents relapse back to smoking, this would be a benefit
- More data is needed on the long-term effects of vaping
- More information on the role of e-cigarette flavours in helping people to quit
- Levels of toxicants are lower among people who use e-cigarettes
- Vaping as well as smoking does not increase levels of harmful toxicants compared to just smoking
Photo Credit:
Photo by Joel Filipe on Unsplash
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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