Paradigm Shift Needed In Pan America’s Approach to End Smoking
World No Tobacco Day serves as an important reminder of the harmful effects of cigarette smoking and the need for…
Zhu S et al., ‘E-cigarette use and associated changes in population smoking cessation: evidence from US current population surveys,’ British Medical Journal, 2017; 358.
Key Points:
- The substantial rise of vaping among US adult smokers led to a statistically significant drop in smoking rates.
- The study examined quit rates among adult smokers over 14 years to see if the growth in vaping’s popularity in the US had an impact on successful quit attempts.
- Vaping became noticeable in the US around 2010 and increased dramatically by 2014. The study used data from five national population surveys between 2001 and 2015.
- Of 161,054 respondents to the 2014-15 survey, 22,548 were current smokers and 2,136 recent quitters. 49.3% of recent quitters had tried e-cigarettes and 19.0% used them currently.
- Key findings:
- Smokers who vaped were 62% more likely to try to quit smoking than those who didn’t. Two out of three ‘dual users’ has tried to quit smoking compared to two out of five smokers (65% vs 40%)
- Smokers that used e-cigarettes were 70% more likely to quit smoking than those who didn’t (8.2% v 4.8%).
- The growth in vaping use coincided with a record drop in smoking rates in the US. The quit rate in 2014-15 was significantly higher than all other survey years.
