Despite a flurry of bad press that has hit the wires recently, particularly towards the middle and back-end of last year, a research report published in the journal Addiction suggests that e-cigarettes help around 50,000 smokers in the UK quit each year.
This is fantastic news for an industry that has seen a rise in scepticism amid negative press coverage and misleading links between e-cigarettes and lung damage in the United States that are now known to have been caused by the inclusion of vitamin E acetate in black market vaping products, a substance banned in the UK.
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An Increasing Success Rate
The study, which was led by University College London (UCL) researchers and supported by Cancer Research UK, drew data from the Smoking Toolkit Study, a series of cross-sectional household surveys that date back 14 years to 2006. According to the report, around 1,200 past-year smokers per quarter---50,498 in total---were involved in the study which included data on smokers aged 16+ in England between 2006 and 2017 who had smoked in the last 12 months.
The UCL research team found that as the use of e-cigarettes as a nicotine therapy and smoking cessation tool began to increase in 2011, so did the success rate of people successfully quitting smoking. And when the increase in the use of e-cigarettes hit its peak and flattened off around 2015, so did the increase in this success. The researchers then made statistical adjustments to factor for seasonality, population levels, underlying trends, and the affordability of tobacco to arrive at their estimation, that in 2017 around 50,700 to 69,930 smokers had stopped with the help of e-cigarettes. These people, the researchers say, would have carried on smoking if it were not for using e-cigarettes.
“This study builds on population surveys and clinical trials that find e-cigarettes can help smokers to stop. England seems to have found a sensible balance between regulation and promotion of e-cigarettes,” said lead author Dr Emma Beard, Senior Research Associate at UCL.
“Marketing is tightly controlled so we are seeing very little use of e-cigarettes by never-smokers of any age while millions of smokers are using them to try to stop smoking or to cut down the amount they smoke.”
However, the researchers acknowledged that the full picture is not yet known when it comes to e-cigarettes and the health effects, if any, are yet to be discovered.
Is Vaping Safe?
The most recent research backed by Public Health England (PHE) shows that using e-cigarettes and vaping is much better for you than smoking, with their research claiming that it is likely 95% safer, if not more. Therefore, if you already smoke cigarettes then switching completely to e-cigarettes will more than likely improve your health significantly.
However, we can say that about a lot of things. If you swapped smoking out for something else such as skydiving, you would still come out ahead. Skydiving daily for 70 years will give you a 23% chance of meeting an early demise whilst lifelong smokers have a 50% chance of dying before the age of 70.
E-cigarette vapour does not include thousands of chemicals like cigarette smoke. E-cig vapour also contains no tar, whereas tobacco smoke does. And although e-cigarettes do contain nicotine when used with nicotine e-liquid, nicotine itself is not known by medical science to cause cancer.
Should I Replace Cigarettes With An E-Cigarette?
We think that the evidence we have so far is pretty conclusive and that there are plenty of benefits to replacing cigarettes with e-cigarettes.
When you replace your regular cigarette with an e-cigarette, you are able to satisfy your nicotine cravings to the same extent as smoking a regular cigarette but without having to smoke one. Essentially, you get the same feeling and the same relief but without all of the nasty chemicals, tar, smell, and expense.
If you are somebody who has already tried smoking cessation products like nicotine patches and gum before but to no avail, you may be naturally sceptical. However, nicotine patches and gum products make it difficult to control how much nicotine your body gets and when. So, if you have a particularly heavy craving, gums and patches may not satisfy it the way you need them to, which can lead to a relapse into smoking. In contrast, e-cigarettes can be picked up and used whenever you have a nicotine craving, allowing you to control your cravings and stand a fighting chance of staying off cigarettes for good, which is part of the reason why they are so effective!
Ready to Try E-Cigarettes?
If you are looking to quit smoking and have decided to give e-cigarettes a go, there is no better brand you can go with than our own—Vaper Empire.
We are widely recognised as an industry leader thanks to an innovative range of vaping products that include various types of e-cigarettes and e-liquid in various strengths and flavours. Why not try out one of our famous e-cigarette starter kits that include everything you need to hit the ground running?
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