A longitudinal analysis of e-cigarette use and smoking cessation
This study aimed to determine whether vaping was linked to successful quitting. It used a group of 949 smokers who completed surveys in 2011 and 2012. The “e-cigarette users” were separated from the non-users, and their intentions to quit were also measured.
What it Found
The study found that e-cig use was not predictive of quitting one year later, which (predictably) led to headlines such as “Study casts doubt on whether e-cigarettes help smokers quit.”
What’s Wrong with It?
This is just like the other studies finding no benefit of e-cigs for quitting. The problem is it recruited smokers and only asked about e-cigarette use at the start of the study. This means it only sampled smokers who had already struggled to quit by vaping.
Worse than that, 60 % of the e-cig users in the study had no intention of quitting smoking in the next six months at the start of the study.
So the researchers had a small group of people who’d tried e-cigarettes but hadn’t quit smoking, with little intention of quitting and who may or may not have used e-cigs to try to quit in the studied time period. Yeah, it’s hardly convincing evidence.
Analysis of the Study
Dr. Michael Siegel: Glantz review article is little more than an unscientific hatchet job on e-cigarettes (covers the study, but not exclusively)
McRobbie et. al. (2014) Electronic cigarettes for smoking cessation and reduction (search “Grana 2014b” for brief coverage of the issues)
