Tobacco smoking v’s Vaping

Tobacco smoking V’s Vaping by Peter Zapfella

From time-to-time people come to me to quit their vaping bad habit. Invariably they are former tobacco smokers who switched to E Cigarettes in an effort to stop smoking. All they did was transfer their bad habit across to vaping.

To be successful, and to prevent a relapse back into tobacco smoking I usually treat both vaping and tobacco smoking at the same time, even if they have not smoked tobacco for years and years,

The reasons are; both activities are similar hand to mouth and tasting activities.  The chemicals and fruit flavors are the same or similar in both products. The personal history is the same for the individual.

So, why would someone who has stopped smoking tobacco want to quit vaping? Firstly, because they took up vaping in a failed attempt to quit tobacco smoking. Somehow, they know they are vaping as a substitute for tobacco, and if they try to stop vaping they will take up smoking tobacco again. Some do.

More importantly, they quit tobacco smoking for health reasons and instead moved sideways into another bad habit with very real implications for their health.

A new study by the Queen Mary University of London and published in the New England Journal of Medicine into the effectiveness of Nicotine Replacement Therapies (NRT) such as patches, gum, lozenges and sprays, and E Cigarettes has found;

• The trial recruited people who were committed to quit tobacco smoking.
• Participants in the trial also recieved weekly one-on-one behavioural support for the first month of the study.
• The study participants received free Nicotine Replacement Therapies (NRT) such as patches, gum, lozenges and sprays.
• Around 90 per cent of NRT users had relapsed back into smoking, within a year.
• More than 80 per cent of E Cigarette users had relapsed back into smoking tobacco again, within a year.
• 8 out of 10 e-cigarette users who quit tobacco smoking successfully, and did not relapse, were still vaping at the end of the 12 month trial. They had simply transferred their bad habit, not overcome it.
• So fewer than 2 in every one hundred people in the study quit tobacco smoking AND vaping. I think that is a very poor outcome, hen ‘cold turkey can get a 5 per cent success rate.
• These results reflect similar results in other trials.

“It wasn’t, ‘Here’s an e-cigarette, good luck! ‘ — people had behavioural support alongside it,” said Professor McRobbie, a professor of public health interventions at Queen Mary University of London.

“We want to see (tobacco) smokers switch [to vaping], and then ideally get off vaping as well,”  Professor McRobbie went on to say.

“This can be seen as problematic if e-cigarette use for a year signals ongoing long-term use, which may pose as-yet-unknown health risks,” the study authors noted.

There is no evidence to show vaping is safe in the long term. Research keeps finding dangerous chemicals in the vaping liquids.

Simon Chapman, emeritus professor of public health at Sydney University, recently told the media “It will take decades before we know whether or not vaping is less dangerous than smoking, and by how much, if at all.”

At this stage the big question is, which is worse for long term health? Tobacco smoking or vaping? No one knows the answer for sure.

Public health experts have raised concerns about the potential uptake of vaping among young people — and this providing a gateway to tobacco smoking.

“I would encourage people using vaping — even as a way of stopping smoking — to also stop vaping.“said Coral Gartner, who leads the NiAcotine and Tobacco Regulatory Science Research Group at the University of Queensland.

Vaping nicotine is legal in Britain, New Zealand, the US and Canada, however, the sale of liquid nicotine is illegal in Australia — a ban that was upheld by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) in 2017.

The E Cigarette patents are owned by tobacco companies. So they profit out of people quitting tobacco to take up the vaping habit long-term.

They also profit from teenagers and young people taking up vaping and perhaps progressing to tobacco.

The ideal health and financial answer is to quit both. See Quit Smoking. Stop Vaping It.