A yearlong study published late January in the New England Journal of Medicine confirmed that e-cigarettes beat both nicotine patches and gum when it comes to smoking cessation tools, with people who used e-cigs as a quitting aid to be twice as likely to stop smoking traditional cigarettes than those who used nicotine gum or patches.
Study authors also found that “E-cigarettes were more effective for smoking cessation than nicotine-replacement therapy when both products were accompanied by behavioral support.” Study participants also received four weeks of anti-smoking counseling.
For the new study, researchers tracked nearly 900 middle-age smokers, recruited from a government smoking-cessation program and were presumably motivated to quit. who were randomly assigned to receive either e-cigarettes or nicotine replacement products, including patches, gums, and lozenges. After one year, 18% of e-cigarette users were smoke-free, while 9.9% of those using the other products.