Electronic Cigarettes Won’t Help Smokers Quit

Electronic cigarettes are unlikely to help smokers quit their nicotine habit, and most e-cig users don't intend to, according to an analysis of a recently conducted survey.

Electronic cigarettes, or e-cigarettes, have often been advertised as "smoking cessation" devices since they first hit the U.S. market. E-cigarette advocates argue that the battery-run devices help smokers quit a tobacco habit by offering an alternative that is supposedly free of the health risks that smoking traditional cigarettes poses. The nicotine "vapor" released from e-cigarette cartages has no tar, nor directly handful to the human lungs -- at least according to short-term preliminary studies.

However, recent reports have indicated that the safety of the devices does not impact their ability to help users kick a smoking habit. In-fact, earlier this month, data was released revealing that it caused just the opposite in adolescent users -- promoting the development of a voracious nicotine habit and promoting the experimentation and/or continued use of traditional tobacco products. This same data also indicated that e-cigarette use made it harder for teens looking to kick their smoking habit to quit compared to those who just smoked traditional cigarettes alone.

Now, an analysis of a recent survey published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Internal Medicine adds more fuel to a fire that is burning away the e-cigarette's claim to being a "smoking cessation device."

In a survey, researchers from the University of California, San Francisco asked nearly 950 smokers how many cigarettes they smoked each day, how long they wait till smoking their first cigarette each morning, whether they intend to quit smoking, and whether they had used an e-cigarette in the past 30 days.

An analysis of the resulting answers found that e-cigarette smokers were significantly more likely to smoke their first traditional cigarette within the first 30 minutes of every morning, compared to standard smokers. The results also indicated that there was no rise in desire to quit smoking among the e-cigarette users surveyed, compared to those who had never used the devices.

The most striking statistic was that after a follow-up period, 13.5 percent of those interviewed wound up quitting their smoking habit, a significantly small portion of the successful quitters were e-cigarette users.

Authors of the analysis concluded their study stating "regulations should prohibit advertising claiming or suggesting that e-cigarettes are effective smoking cessation devices until claims are supported by scientific evidence."

The study was published in JAMA Internal Medicine on March 24.