Trying to quit smoking? E-cigarettes won’t help, and may do more harm to lungs and make you relapse, study suggests

Smokers who swapped cigarettes for another form of tobacco – including e-cigarettes – were more likely to relapse a year later, study finds

Vitamin E acetate – a specific additive in some e-cigarettes – can disrupt lung function when inhaled, health experts say

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E-cigarettes are often though of as safer alternatives to tobacco products, but a new study contradicts this. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 2:30am, 27 Oct 2021

Some studies have suggested switching to e-cigarettes could help smokers stay away from regular cigarettes, which generally contain more harmful chemicals when burned. But new research shows the opposite effect.

People who quit smoking and switched to another form of tobacco use, including e-cigarettes, were more likely to relapse to regular cigarettes a year later than those who quit altogether by 8.5 percentage points, according to data from the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health study conducted by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the US Food and Drug Administration Centre for Tobacco Products.

Researchers followed 13,604 smokers identified between 2013 and 2015 for two years, and asked participants to complete surveys about their use of 12 different tobacco products, such as cigars, pipes and hookah.

The study was published this month in the journal JAMA Network Open.

A study looked at whether vaping was a safer alternative to smoking and if users went back to smoking cigarettes. Photo: Shutterstock

“This is the first study to take a deep look at whether switching to a less harmful nicotine source can be maintained over time without relapsing to cigarette smoking,” study first author Dr John Pierce, a professor emeritus in the department of family medicine and public health at the University of California San Diego, said in a news release.