Can e-cigarettes replace cigarettes to help quit smoking?

Can e-cigarettes replace cigarettes to help quit smoking?

The official website of the British government released the “Vaping in England: 2021 evidence update summary” in March this year. The report pointed out that e-cigarettes are the most commonly used aid to quit smoking by smokers in the UK in 2020. In the United Kingdom, 27.2% of smokers use e-cigarettes to help quit smoking.

Regarding the effectiveness of e-cigarettes in assisting smoking cessation, the most reliable conclusion comes from the international medical organization Cochrane. This non-profit organization named in honor of Archiebald L. Cochrane, the founder of evidence-based medicine, was founded in 1993. It is the most authoritative independent academic organization of evidence-based medicine in the world. So far, it has more than 37,000 volunteers in more than 170 countries.

In October 2020, Cochrane conducted 50 professional evidence-based medical studies on more than 10,000 adult smokers worldwide. Different from traditional medicine based on empirical medicine, evidence-based medicine emphasizes that medical decision-making should be based on the best scientific research evidence. Therefore, evidence-based medicine research will not only conduct large-sample randomized controlled clinical trials, systematic reviews, and meta-analysis, but also divide the level of evidence obtained according to standards, which is very rigorous.

In this study, Cochrane found a total of 50 studies from 13 countries including the United States and the United Kingdom, involving 12,430 adult smokers. The conclusion shows that e-cigarettes have the effect of assisting smoking cessation, and the effect is better than that of nicotine replacement therapy.

In fact, as early as 2019, University College London pointed out that e-cigarettes can help 50,000-70,000 British smokers to quit smoking every year. Researchers from the Vienna Medical University in Austria have also shown that the success rate of smokers who use e-cigarettes to quit smoking is 1.69 times higher than that of smokers who use nicotine replacement therapy.