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

Wellness

Tribune News Service

Published: 2:30am, 27 Oct 2021

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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.

“If switching to e-cigarettes was a viable way to quit cigarette smoking, then those who switched to e-cigarettes should have much lower relapse rates to cigarette smoking,” Pierce said. “We found no evidence of this.”

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Among people who quit using all tobacco products, 50 per cent were successful at staying away from regular cigarettes by the second follow-up with researchers a year later.

However, fewer people (41.5 per cent) who initially quit then switched to another method such as e-cigarettes were able to refrain from returning to regular cigarettes. These adults were more likely to be white and have higher incomes and tobacco dependence, the researchers found.

They were also more likely to view e-cigarettes as a healthier alternative to regular cigarettes.

Scientists are still studying the long-term health effects of using e-cigarettes. Photo: Shutterstock

E-cigarettes are still relatively new, so scientists are continuing to learn more about any long-term health effects they may cause, the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention says.

They do contain fewer harmful chemicals than regular cigarettes, but the CDC notes e-cigarette aerosols can carry cancer-causing chemicals and “tiny particles that reach deep into the lungs.” E-cigarettes also contain nicotine, which is highly addictive.

Newer models of e-cigarettes use nicotine salts that allow higher levels of the substance to be inhaled with less throat irritation. Experts say the feature could increase nicotine dependence in some people and lead others, particularly teens and young adults, to try smoking for the first time.

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Vitamin E acetate – a specific additive in some e-cigarettes, mostly those that carry the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana called THC – “is strongly linked” to outbreaks of “e-cigarette, or vaping, product use-associated lung injury”, or EVALI, which peaked in September 2019.

The additive typically does not harm people when consumed as a vitamin supplement or rubbed on skin, but it can disrupt lung function when inhaled, the CDC says.

Researchers of the new study say a third follow-up survey is needed to better understand if switching from regular to e-cigarettes and back again is a “pattern of chronic quitting and relapsing to cigarette smoking, or whether it is part of progress toward successful quitting.”

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