According to a study published in the British Medical Journal, electronic cigarettes may have helped nearly 18,000 smokers quit last year in England.
For pro-vaping, this is further proof that the electronic cigarette helps quit tobacco. And once again, it is to our neighbors across the Channel that we must turn. After a British report claiming that e-cigarettes are 95% less harmful than tobacco, another British study suggests that vaping could have helped 18,000 smokers to quit smoking last year in England.
These results published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) come from a team of researchers led by Emma Beard of University College London. For this scientist, “the positive impact of electronic cigarettes is all the more likely because, at the same time, funding for public programs to help smokers has been reduced in England”. As a reminder, just under one in five adults smokes in the UK. And public services offer smoking cessation assistance, including advice and prescriptions, but not the e-cigarette used by 2.8 million people in the UK.
Unanimous English researchers
“Attempts to quit smoking were more successful when electronic cigarettes became popular,” commented Ann McNeill, a specialist in tobacco addiction issues at King’s College London, who did not took part in this study.
“In my opinion, smokers who are struggling to quit smoking should try all possible methods, including e-cigarettes,” she adds. Same story with John Britton, director of the British Center for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies. In a comment from BMJ, he believes that the e-cigarette is “probably a major contributor to this success”. According to him, the drop of one point in 2015 compared to 2014 in the percentage of adult smokers “indicates that something in the tobacco control policy in the UK is working”.
Go further
Except that in the fight against tobacco, the 18,000 ex-smokers identified in 2015 by this study ultimately represent a “relatively low” figure, deplore the authors of the work, specifying however that it is medically “significant given the huge health benefits of quitting smoking ”. However, in the face of these interesting results, we must remain cautious, since this study is not a clinical trial. It is therefore impossible to draw any causal link between the use of e-cigarettes and the number of withdrawals.
To motivate them to stop smoking, these researchers point out that “a 40-year-old person who quits smoking can expect to live nine years longer than a smoker who has always smoked during his life”.
No serious adverse side effects
Another report on e-cigarettes, published simultaneously by the Cochrane Library, also concludes that this electronic device can help smokers get rid of tobacco “within six to twelve months”. The Cochrane review also finds, in an update of its findings from 2014, that e-cigarette use is not associated with serious unwanted side effects. In any case, among the 600 participants in this work who vaped for two years.
The studies compiled have only shown that throat and mouth irritation are the most frequently reported short to medium term side effects. 6 million Europeans have already abandoned tobacco in favor of e-cigarettes, according to the latest Eurobarometer published in the review Addiction .
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