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Vaping instead of smoking: Is that how you get away from tobacco?
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Photo: Friso Gentsch / dpa
If you want to stop smoking, you not only have to overcome the physical dependency, but above all the psychological one: No more puffing, no more cigarette breaks, no more enjoyable smoking over a glass of wine.
Or?
Since the invention of e-cigarettes, many smokers have relied on not having to give up all their habits.
The hope is slow weaning: first the switch from smoking to vaping, then finally complete abstinence.
But it is obviously not that simple, at least not with all smokers.
A current study in the journal »Jama« comes to the conclusion that smokers who wanted to quit tobacco by e-cigarette relapsed more often a year later than those who stopped smoking completely.
So is it all just a PR coup for the e-cigarette companies?
It's not that easy to say either.
The "Jama" long-term study was based on data from the "Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health" (PATH) study, which investigated the effects of tobacco smoking on behalf of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) studied on the health of the population in the United States.
The FDA plans to use the results to develop stricter regulation of tobacco products.
A total of 49,000 people aged twelve and over are taking part in the study.
The US scientists now examined a representative sample of 13,604 smokers from the PATH study.
Over a period of two years, they asked the participants about their smoking behavior.
It was found that 9.4 percent of those surveyed had stopped smoking tobacco cigarettes.
22.8 percent of them have switched to e-cigarettes.
A year later they were asked again: 62.9 percent were still tobacco-free, the rest had started smoking again.
Half made it with complete abstinence
The team of scientists led by John Pierce from the Moores Cancer Center in San Diego wanted to know whether non-smokers found it easier to quit with the help of e-cigarettes or with complete abstinence.
Of the study participants who used e-cigarettes as a switch, 41.6 percent had managed to quit smoking completely after one year.
Of those who completely renounced any nicotine products, 50.5 percent managed to remain abstinent in the end.
So the results suggest that so-called cold withdrawal may be the more effective way to stop smoking in the long term.
However, experts were critical of the British Science Media Center about the study and its interpretation.
Peter Hajek, director of the Tobacco Dependence Research Unit at Queen Mary University in London, criticized the fact that people who ignore the fact that smokers who use a switch to quit are often much more dependent than smokers who opt for cold withdrawal decide.
The very dependent smokers would have a much higher relapse rate anyway. "If anything, the study suggests that e-cigarette use eliminates tobacco addiction rather than causing relapse," says Hajek. “This coincides with other evidence that e-cigarettes are an effective tool for quitting smoking. Smokers who want to quit should not be discouraged from trying e-cigarettes. "
The study situation on the use of e-cigarettes for tobacco abstinence is generally controversial, writes the "Ärzteblatt".
The results of randomized studies are also inconclusive.
According to a meta-analysis by the Cochrane Collaboration, switching to e-cigarettes could increase the chances of successful abstinence, especially when combined with psychological counseling.
Another meta-analysis that examined 64 studies on the subject, in turn, comes to the conclusion that e-cigarettes are of no use in smoking cessation if they are bought by oneself.
However, if they are made available free of charge as a therapeutic agent, they have been successful.
The data show that e-cigarettes are apparently not the ideal route to non-smokers, but can help in some cases.
What has now been well researched are the harmful substances that e-cigarettes also contain: Around 2100 different substances have been detected in tobacco-flavored liquids, including caffeine, plasticizers, flame retardants and condensed hydrocarbons.
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