Vaping Alone Isn't Enough to Quit Smoking: New Research

Image Credit: @FraGalante/Twenty20

The eye-rolling comeback still holds true: We get it, you vape. And there are all kinds of reasons people turn to e-cigarettes, whether it's liking the flavors, getting to smoke inside again, or even trying to quit tobacco full stop. If you're trying to use vaping to wean yourself off smoking, however, Ohio State University has some bad news for you.

Public health researchers at OSU have just released a study looking into quitting habits of smokers who use both tobacco and e-cigarettes like Juul. Vaping didn't make smokers any more likely to quit smoking than relying only on combustible products. And while the health effects of smoking tobacco are widely studied and publicized, we don't know enough about what vaping does to the body to definitively call it a good trade-off.

One reason vaping may have caught on in the popular imagination as a smoking cessation tool is that for the first six months of the OSU study, dual users of vaping and tobacco were actually more likely to have stopped smoking cigarettes. However, at further check-ins 12 and 18 months after initial intakes, enough of those dual users had fallen back on cigarettes to erase those gains. One piece of context: This study focuses on heavy smokers, rather than occasion or social smokers, and study participants all started smoking with tobacco products, rather than becoming smokers through e-cigarette use.

In short? If you're trying to quit smoking (which is an ongoing and cyclical process), hold off on that new Juul. Traditional smoking cessation aids, like nicotine gum or patches, are more thoroughly understood and more likely to help.