US
A new study is the first of its kind to suggest that for some people, e-cigarettes could help more than they hurt.
Researchers at Columbia University and Rutgers University studied how patterns of quitting smoking have changed across America since e-cigarettes were introduced in 2010.
They looked at two years of data from an annual, nationwide household survey and homed in on two groups of people: current smokers and former smokers who quit during or before 2010, the year e-cigarettes were introduced. From the roughly 15,500 adults the researchers looked at, those who said they used e-cigs daily were far more likely to have quit regular cigarettes than the people who said they’d never tried e-cigs. Over half of daily e-cigarette users had quit smoking in the past five years, compared to just 28% of those who had never tried them.
Daniel Giovenco, an assistant professor of sociomedical sciences at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and the lead study author, said, “Our findings suggest that frequent e-cigarette use may play an important role in cessation or relapse prevention for some smokers.”