This month, the New England Journal of Medicine released the results of a study on the effectiveness of e-cigarettes for smoking cessation.
Spoiler alert: They work.
As e-cig opponents continue to sound the alarm over health risks of vaping, they face a challenge in an increasingly obvious truth: The use of e-cigs helps smokers quit their tobacco addictions.
The study was conducted in Switzerland on 1,246 people who smoked at least five cigarettes a day and “wanted to set a quit date.” 622 participants were placed into an intervention group and 624 were placed into a control group. In the intervention group, participants were given free e-cigarettes and free liquids, along with smoking-cessation counseling. Those in the control group were given standard cessation counseling, and a voucher which could be used for nicotine replacement therapy, or other uses. The stated outcome of the study was, “biochemically validated, continuous abstinence from smoking at 6 months,” and the breakdown of the results was 28.9% for the intervention group and 16.3% for the control group. They summarize their conclusion saying, “The addition of e-cigarettes to standard smoking-cessation counseling resulted in greater abstinence from tobacco use among smokers than smoking-cessation counseling alone.”
In addition to the report on the study, the journal also released an editorial by Nancy Rigotti, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital, in which Rigotti gives recommendations for policymakers regarding e-cigarettes.
“The available evidence indicates that switching completely from smoking combustible cigarettes to vaping nicotine e-cigarettes substantially reduces a person’s exposure to tobacco toxins, reduces respiratory symptoms, and reverses smoking-related physiological changes,” she writes.
“It is now time for the medical community to acknowledge this progress and add e-cigarettes to the smoking-cessation toolkit,” she continues. “U.S. public health agencies and professional medical societies should reconsider their cautious positions on e-cigarettes for smoking cessation.”
In other words, harm reduction works if the market is allowed to correct for the dangers of smoking. And E-cigarettes are just one example.
The NEJM study and editorial are just the latest in a long line of reports from health authorities backing the effectiveness of e-cigs for smoking cessation. It helps that the study was an open-label, randomized, controlled trial with good oversight and credible procedural methods; effectively the gold-standard for public health policy. The results vindicate what tobacco advocates have been saying for years now.
It’s time for lawmakers around the country to take note. Instead of following the lead of states like Massachusetts and California that have already taken aggressive anti-vaping stances by enacted bans on the sale of flavored products, states should be slow to restrict a market that’s helping tobacco addicts kick their habit.
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Touted as a means of protecting the youth from getting into vaping and smoking down the line, these bans have had unintended negative consequences. Three years after the flavor ban in Massachusetts, a report from the state’s Multi-Agency Illegal Tobacco Task Force found the ban had resulted in a surge in black market products. As the demand on these products hadn’t gone away, all the ban did was make teen use of these illegal and unregulated products riskier.
The bans have had negative results in California too, namely, leading to the overcriminalization of the use of these flavored products. California has seen a rise in illicit markets for these products from bordering states and Mexico, and it has not seen the decline of smoking that these measures were intended to produce. Nevertheless, California Attorney General Rob Bonta celebrated the legislation and the recent decision by the Supreme Court to not hear the case challenging the ban. The new study should pose a challenge to Bonta and others on the effectiveness of California’s policy decisions.
States that have enacted bans need to reconsider the decisions they have made to curb the use of these products. States that have not yet enacted laws should follow the science when setting policy.
David Mendoza is an educator at a classical school in California and a member of the Young Voices contributor program. He holds a B.A. from the Master’s College and an M.A. from Westminster Seminary California.