A New RCT!
The majority of smokers accessing the current best treatments continue to smoke so researchers aimed to test how e-cigarettes compared to nicotine replacement treatment (NRT) to help such smokers to reduce smoking. The team included Professor Peter Hajek, responsible for the first ground-breaking efficacy study showing vaping was three times better than NRT at helping smokers quit.
“Among smokers seeking help, most do not achieve smoking cessation even with intensive treatments. Some 80% of smokers treated in clinical trials where various selection criteria apply and more than 80% of those receiving intensive treatment in routine care smoke 1 year later,” the authors of the study state.
Their words will resonate with most vapers who struggled to quit tobacco use until they discovered vaping. Patches, gum, and counselling all failed where custard or strawberry e-liquid succeeded.
NRT hasn’t been a complete failure though; designed with ‘cut down to quit’ in mind, the idea is to gradually wean the user off nicotine dependence. “The approach, however, is costly, the quit rates that it generates are low,” they say, “and achieved only with regular behavioural support and monitoring.”
“The rise of e-cigarettes has now provided a new impetus to explore this issue further. E-cigarettes have been shown to provide help to smokers attempting to quit.”
The team noted that vaping has helped people to quit smoking or reduce the volume of cigarettes they used who weren’t planning on quitting. It is this aspect that they find revolutionary – a 9% smoking cessation rate after one year, but they do note that a previous study looking at this aspect had no control group not receiving e-cigarettes.
A key to vaping, they believe, is the link to vaping helping smokers to reduce the volume of cigarettes they smoke. Helping to break a habit is something that traditional approaches have and continue to fail to achieve in the majority of cases.
References:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/add.15628
https://www.planetofthevapes.co.uk/news/vaping-news/2021-12-17_a-new-rct.html
