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E-cigarettes May Not Bring Down Smoking Rates: Study

E-cigarettes May Not Bring Down Smoking Rates: Study
(Photo : Flickr) E-cigarettes May Not Bring Down Smoking Rates: Study

Electronic cigarettes may not help people get over smoking addiction, according to a study.

E-cigarettes are battery-powered devices that imitate normal cigarettes by using a heating system to emit vapor free of tar and carbon monoxide. The E-cigarettes business generated $2 million revenue and bagged approval to be sold in markets after some researches vouched for its safety and benefits in curbing tobacco smoking addictions.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, usage of e-cigarettes among young students and adolescents more than doubled in the last two years. Due to lack of conclusive data on the long term effects of the device, healthcare officials have repeatedly disapproved this widespread usage.  

A research team led by Rachel Grana from the University of California, San Francisco assessed data from a survey of 949 smokers to test the efficacy of e-cigarettes in bringing down smoking habit within a year. It was found that these devices do not aid smoking cessations and are not directly linked to changes in the consumption of cigarettes. Those who smoked these battery-powered cigarette substitutes continued to smoke the same number of normal cigarettes. The findings revealed only 13 percent of the subjects quit smoking within a year after using e-cigarettes.

"We did not find a relationship between using an e-cigarette and reducing cigarette consumption," Grana said, according to Reuters.

The study noted about 88 of the participants reportedly used e-cigarettes. Owing to the limited usage, researchers were unable to quantify the benefits of smoking the device. Subjects that used e-cigarettes were mostly women, teenagers and less-educated individuals. Researchers of the survey didn't gather information such as usage duration and reasons for choosing e-cigarettes by the participants to predict if they actually quit the habit.

"Nonetheless, our data add to the current evidence that e-cigarettes may not increase rates of smoking cessation," the authors said. "Regulations should prohibit advertising claiming or suggesting that e-cigarettes are effective smoking cessation devices until claims are supported by scientific evidence."

The research is available in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Mar 25, 2014 07:07 AM EDT By

Provided by The JAMA Network Journals

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