Turns out vaping — here comes the science — doesn't help smokers quit: UCSD study

Vaping does not help smokers quit, a study published Wednesday by UC San Diego researchers found, refuting a common misconception among tobacco and e-cigarette users.

The report, published Wednesday in the academic journal JAMA by scientists at the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science and Moores Cancer Center at UCSD, analyzed thousands of smokers and e-cigarette users to come to its conclusion.

"Most smokers think vaping will help you quit smoking," said study co-author John Pierce, professor in the Herbert Wertheim School. "However, this belief is not supported by science to date. While some researchers have suggested that smokers who switch to daily vaping will be more successful in quitting smoking, we studied quitting success among both daily and non-daily vapersn and came up with a quite definitive answer."

In fact, people who vape daily actually reported 4.1% lower rates of quitting. For those who vaped occasionally, the cessation rates were 5.3% lower than smokers who do not vape.

Around 20% of Americans use some kind of tobacco product, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. The majority of these are cigarette smokers, but due to a perception of vaping being less harmful, many people have switched to vaping in recent years, the researchers said.

"So e-cigarettes are not safe — we know that," said John Pierce, a professor of health policy at UC San Diego. "We know there's all sorts of gunk they're putting in their lungs. All the glycerin is coming in, There's some heavy metals in it. We know they're not safe. We just don't know like we do for cigarettes."

Right now, vapes are still to new a vice for any studies to have been completed on their long-term effects.

"The adverse health effects of cigarette smoking become obvious after people have smoked for 20 years," Pierce said. "While vapes generally don't contain the same harmful chemicals as cigarette smoke, they have other risks, and we just don't yet know what the health consequences of vaping over 20 to 30 years will be."

The researchers were able to control for a variety of factors that impact tobacco cessation such as recent quitting attempts, a smoke-free home and the cost of cigarettes and related paraphernalia.

"For example, if a smoker is already very interested in quitting, has a smoke-free home and does not smoke daily, they are much more likely to successfully quit regardless of whether they vape or not," said senior author Karen Messer, professor of biostatistics in the Wertheim School. "We matched each smoker/vaper on such characteristics. You have to make very sure you're comparing like with like, and that's why this analysis is so definitive."

The authors of the paper said that not accounting for these factors have given the public false beliefs about e-cigarettes for years.

"As the public health community continues to grapple with the complexities of tobacco control, it is essential that we rely on rigorous scientific evidence to inform our policies and interventions," Messer said. "Our research shows that misleading associations between vaping and smoking cessation routinely occur unless confounding characteristics are carefully accounted for."

According to the researchers, the findings could have significance for public health policy and practice for e-cigarettes — particularly how they are marketed to teenagers.

"There's still a lot we don't know about the impact of vaping on people," said Natalie Quach, a biostatistics Ph.D. student at the Wertheim School and the study's first author. "But what we do know is that the idea that vaping helps people quit isn't actually true. It is more likely that it keeps them addicted to nicotine."

About two-thirds of smokers thought e-cigarettes would help them quit, which turns out not to be the case at all.

"And so that's coming from tobacco-industry advertising," Pierce said. "The scientific evidence doesn't support it."