Zhu S et al., ‘E-cigarette use and associated changes in population smoking cessation: evidence from US current population surveys,’ British Medical Journal, 2017; 358.
- The substantial rise of vaping among US adult smokers led to a statistically significant drop in smoking rates.
- The study examined quit rates among adult smokers over 14 years to see if the growth in vaping’s popularity in the US had an impact on successful quit attempts.
- Vaping became noticeable in the US around 2010 and increased dramatically by 2014. The study used data from five national population surveys between 2001 and 2015.
- Of 161,054 respondents to the 2014-15 survey, 22,548 were current smokers and 2,136 recent quitters. 49.3% of recent quitters had tried e-cigarettes and 19.0% used them currently.
- Key findings:
- Smokers who vaped were 62% more likely to try to quit smoking than those who didn’t. Two out of three ‘dual users’ has tried to quit smoking compared to two out of five smokers (65% vs 40%)
- Smokers that used e-cigarettes were 70% more likely to quit smoking than those who didn’t (8.2% v 4.8%).
- The growth in vaping use coincided with a record drop in smoking rates in the US. The quit rate in 2014-15 was significantly higher than all other survey years.
