Research suggests e-cigarettes won’t help you quit smoking regular cigs

Some studies have suggested switching to e-cigarettes could help smokers stay away from regular cigarettes, which generally contain more harmful chemicals when burned. But new research shows the opposite effect.

People who quit smoking and switched to another form of tobacco use, including e-cigarettes, were more likely to relapse to regular cigarettes a year later than those who quit altogether by 8.5 percentage points, according to data from the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health study conducted by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Center for Tobacco Products.

Researchers followed 13,604 smokers identified between 2013 and 2015 for two years in which participants completed surveys about their use of 12 different tobacco products, such as cigars, pipes and hookah.

The study was recently published in the journal JAMA Network Open.

“This is the first study to take a deep look at whether switching to a less harmful nicotine source can be maintained over time without relapsing to cigarette smoking,” study first author Dr. John Pierce, a professor emeritus in the department of family medicine and public health at the University of California San Diego, said in a release.

“If switching to e-cigarettes was a viable way to quit cigarette smoking, then those who switched to e-cigarettes should have much lower relapse rates to cigarette smoking,” Pierce said. “We found no evidence of this.”

Among people who quit using all tobacco products, 50% were successful at staying away from regular cigarettes by the second follow-up with researchers a year later. However, fewer people (41.5%) who initially quit then switched to another method such as e-cigarettes were able to refrain from returning to regular cigarettes.

Researchers of the new study say a third follow-up survey is needed to better understand if switching from regular to e-cigarettes and back again is a “pattern of chronic quitting and relapsing to cigarette smoking, or whether it is part of progress toward successful quitting.”