Vaping helps smokers quit even if they don’t want to – because it’s MORE enjoyable
VAPING helps smokers quit even if they don't want to because it's more enjoyable, new research suggests.
It means smokers who ditch fags in favour of vaping may be better able to stay away from cigarettes in the future, experts from the University of East Anglia said.
The team interviewed 40 people who use e-cigarettes and asked them about their tobacco history, prior attempts to quit and how they started vaping.
They also asked out times they had relapsed to smoking fags.
Most of the group said they had attempted to quit several times before opting for vaping, but 17 per cent said they enjoyed smoking and had never tried to quit before.
Lead researcher Dr Caitlin Notley from the university's medical school said: "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.
"Many people talked about how they saw vaping was a no pressure approach to quitting."
Most of the group admitted they switched quickly from smoking to vaping, while others found themselves gradually moving towards ditching fags for good.
"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," Dr Notley added.
"This study suggests that vaping is a viable long-term substitute for smoking, with substantial implications for tobacco harm reduction."
Vaping is thought to be less harmful than smoking and last year Public Health England endorsed them as a quit smoking aid in 30-second TV adverts.
";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," Dr Notley said.
"However the idea of using e-cigarettes to stop smoking, and particularly long-term use, remains controversial.
"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.
"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."
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Alison Cox, director of cancer prevention at Cancer Research UK, which helped fund the study, said: "The evidence so far shows that e-cigarettes are far safer than tobacco.
"E-cigarettes do still contain nicotine which is addictive, but it's not responsible for the major harms of smoking.
"It's great to see this early indication that e-cigarettes could encourage smokers who weren't originally thinking of quitting to give up.
"But more research is needed to understand exactly how e-cigarettes are being used by people who don't want to stop smoking and how often this results in quitting."
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