Vaping is good for people who want to quit smoking according to new research – Business Insider Africa

According to the report, 622 individuals out of the total participants were placed in what was termed the 'intervention group'. This group received an unlimited supply of e-cigarettes in any flavour they preferred, along with other aids to give up smoking, like nicotine patches and counselling. The rest of the participants only received counselling and quitting aids, but not e-cigarettes.

After six months of observation, 29% of the e-cigarette group had successfully quit smoking compared to just 16% from the other group. At the end of the study, 60% of the people who vaped quit smoking compared to 40% of people who gave up without the help of e-cigarettes.

According to Dr. Reto Auer, the study's lead researcher and a Professor of Medicine at the University of Bern, the findings align with other research showing similar outcomes. He also noted that the research team plans to follow up with the participants for five years to further evaluate the long-term safety and efficacy of vaping as a cessation tool.

I'm a primary care doctor, and smoking cessation is a core element of my daily clinical practice. So it's really important to know if people stop smoking, and I think that becoming really clear in the literature that it helps to quit smoking, Auer said.

We aim to follow up on participants for 12, 24, months, but also at five years to continue to see how, over time, participants use these products and about long-term health," Auer added.

Experts outside the study, such as Dr. Sarah Jackson from the Tobacco and Alcohol Research Group at University College London, also support the evidence that vaping can be a more effective method for quitting smoking. She highlighted that those provided with e-cigarettes were nearly twice as likely to stop smoking for six months or more compared to those who received standard care, without any significant increase in adverse health events or respiratory issues.

It's a really delicate balancing act because what we want to do is try and make sure that these products are as attractive and appealing as they can be to people who smoke, to encourage them to switch to a much less harmful product," she says.

"But in doing so, we don't want to make them too attractive to young people, in particular, who have never smoked. So it's it's a careful balancing act that requires trade-offs. But I think it's essential that we don't make these effective smoking cessation aids less attractive to people who smoke by removing the flavours."

Auer agreed, saying, It's the central conundrum we'll always have with e-cigarettes: on one side, helping smokers quit. And on the other side, avoiding that adolescents become addicted to nicotine.

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Vaping is good for people who want to quit smoking according to new research - Business Insider Africa