Nicotine vapes triple the chances of quitting smoking

Nicotine vapers can triple the chances of smokers successfully quitting traditional cigarettes, as well as exposing them to fewer harmful chemicals, according to a new study.

Smokers who started using a nicotine e-cigarette were more than three times more likely to quit smoking in six weeks, compared to those who used an identical e-cigarette without nicotine, according to results published May 19 in JAMA Network Open.

They also had lower levels of toxic chemicals produced by burning tobacco, according to the researchers. For people who smoke and have not been able to quit using approved medications, this research suggests that switching to an e-cigarette with nicotine is associated with a real reduction in exposure to harmful toxins and does support smoking cessation,” said lead researcher Jessica Yingst, associate professor of public health sciences at Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, Pennsylvania. “It’s a significant finding for public health,” added Yingst in a press release.

For the new study, researchers explored the potential benefits that smokers could obtain by switching to pod-based nicotine salt e-cigarettes, which are among the most popular vapes on the market.

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Nicotine is addictive, but it is not the main cause of smoking-related cancers or heart disease, according to researchers in background notes. Instead, lit tobacco creates thousands of chemicals that smokers inhale, including at least 70 toxins known to cause cancer, according to the American Cancer Society. Researchers recruited 104 people who smoked more than four cigarettes a day and were interested in switching to vaping. Participants were asked to stop smoking and then were randomly assigned to use either a 5% nicotine e-cigarette or an identical device that delivered no nicotine. After six weeks, 69 people were still in the study, divided almost equally between the two different types of vapers, a typical dropout rate for a smoking cessation study, according to the researchers. At that time, almost 37% of nicotine vapers had stopped smoking completely, compared to approximately 12% of those who had nicotine-free vapers, according to the study. Urine and breath samples showed that e-cigarette nicotine users also had lower levels of NNAL, a marker of a potent lung carcinogen that only comes from tobacco leaf. This demonstrates that fewer people who used nicotine vapes were sneaking cigarettes, they said. Those users also experienced less withdrawal and fewer cravings.

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“How nicotine is administered matters,” said Yingst. “The e-cigarette with nicotine provides a similar level of nicotine to that of a cigarette, satisfying cravings and making it easier to switch, but its overall exposure to toxic chemicals decreased considerably.” The nicotine-free group likely had more difficulty quitting smoking because they were not consuming nicotine in their vaping, he noted.