A new U.S. study shows that vaping could help smokers who had no intention to quit kick the habit entirely.
BUFFALO, N.Y. — A new study that was led by doctors at the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo found that adult smokers who had no intention to quit smoking were more likely to do so if they switched behaviors to daily nicotine vaping.
“These findings are paradigm-shifting, because the data suggest that vaping may actually help people who are not actively trying to quit smoking,” said Dr. Andew Hyland, the chair of Health Behavior at Roswell Park, in a press statement. “Most other studies focus exclusively on people who are actively trying to quit smoking, but this study suggests that we may be missing effects of e-cigarettes by not considering this group of smokers with limited intention to stop smoking — a group that is often at the highest risk for poor health outcomes from cigarette smoking.”
Hyland was joined by others, including researchers with affiliations at the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
This involvement from these agencies is noted because the study was done under the PATH program that measures tobacco use trends in the US. This study was an official collaboration between the FDA the NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse.
“While clinical trials show strong evidence that vaping can help people quit smoking, findings from real-world population studies have been mixed,” said Dr. Karin Kasza, a research scientist also based at Roswell Park who was also involved with the study.
“Our study identified a positive association between daily vaping and cigarette quitting specifically among the segment of smokers who were not planning to quit, consistent with data from clinical trials,” Dr. Kasza added in the same press release as Hyland.
