Can Vaping Help People Quit Smoking? It’s a Fact

 

Simon Chapman, emeritus professor in public health at the University of Sydney in Australia, is a long-time anti-tobacco activist and frequent contributor to The Conversation, which bills itself as “the world's leading publisher of research-based news and analysis.”  Undercutting that claim is a May 3 article Chapman authored, titled, “Can vaping help people quit smoking?” Chapman predictably answered that “It’s unlikely.”

His vaping analysis in support of that finding is grossly flawed.

Chapman starts with the “Myth of ‘hardened smokers’” -- “die-hard addicts: frequently relapsing smokers who just can’t quit.”  He asserts that their existence is a myth because the “average number of cigarettes smoked per day would be rising.”  That number has, in fact, fallen, but for entirely unrelated reasons, such as the imposition of a range of barriers to smoking, both social and economic, over a period of 20 years.

Chapman follows with a sweeping statement: “In other words, there is no evidence long-term smokers are impervious to the suite of tobacco control policies and campaigns that have driven hundreds of millions of smokers around the world to quit.”

No evidence?  There is definitive evidence: 480,000 dead smokers every year in the U.S.

Next, Chapman says that “Vapes don’t help smokers cut back.”  He’s talking about smokers who also vape, and there may be some truth in that, but the larger reality is that Chapman and his anti-tobacco allies in government and academia have been waging for years a very successful misinformation campaign, convincing smokers that vaping is as, or more dangerous than smoking.

Chapman asks how effective vapes are for smoking cessation, and answers with this: “The most recent Cochrane review of randomised controlled trials compared vaping with nicotine replacement therapy (such as drugs, gums and patches). It found about 82% of people who vape are still smoking when followed up six or more months later.  This was better than those using nicotine replacement therapy: 90% were still smoking.”  That answer is both humorous and revealing.

It’s amusing because I have made the same claim about medicinal nicotine for decades, and I agree that “trials also poorly reflect the ways vapes and nicotine replacement therapy are used in the real world and aren’t representative of all smokers wanting to quit.” (here)  In fact, population success with medicinal nicotine is only 7%.  But his answer is also revealing, since his point that 82% of those vaping are still smoking means that 18% quit with vapes, compared with only 10% relying on nicotine medicines.  Why would anyone deny smokers, who could be facing life-threatening illness, the option to quit by vaping?

Chapman posted his article in support of Australia’s crackdown on access to vaping products. Clearly, that government initiative and his pseudo-scientific analysis are woefully flawed.

 

CBS Mornings’ Tony Dokoupil Highlights UK’s Support for Vaping as a Quit-Smoking Tool vs. U.S. Head-in-the-Sand Denial

 

Broadcast journalist Tony Dokoupil co-anchors “CBS Mornings”.  Last year, Variety magazine reported, “He’s also developing a reputation for explaining abstract concepts to viewers in ways that make the subjects stick.”  Dokoupil says he emphasizes “talking to regular people where the story is happening and happening to them.”

What’s happening is that 480,000 Americans per year die due to their smoking habit.  On “CBS Mornings” April 14, Dokoupil used this number to contrast the stark differences between American and British e-cigarette policies.  He focused on the British government’s new “Swap to Stop”* program that will provide one-million smokers with free vaping products, versus the U.S. government’s refusal to acknowledge the truth about vastly safer smoke-free cigarette substitutes. 

This video should be seen by every American smoker and vaper, and, more importantly, by every U.S. health policymaker and journalist.  The UK has figured out how to save hundreds of thousands of lives yearly.

 

*Title reminiscent of my 2011 Switch and Quit Owensboro program (here and here). 

 

 

UK Favors E-Cigarettes, Scores Major Smoking Reduction; Anti-Vaping Ireland Sees Smoking Rates Unchanged

There is, as I have noted (here), a stark contrast between British government and medical authorities’ support for e-cigarettes and vaping, and the demonization of same by most of the American public health community.  A similar clash of positions exists between the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland.

The British blogger Dick Puddlecote observes (here) that the UK and Ireland are “nearest cultural neighbours, so closely aligned [that] we that we don't even enforce passport requirements between the two countries.  The British and the Irish are about as good a comparison for ecological purposes as there can possibly be.  And, as [British Member of Parliament Sir Kevin] Barron said, the only difference between UK policy and Irish policy is that over here our government cautiously welcomes new nicotine products whereas in Ireland they don't.”

Puddlecote underscores: “In the UK smoking rates have nosedived, while in Ireland they have barely shifted.”

I have verified that statement by reviewing government data.  The UK’s Office for National Statistics reported that smoking prevalence was 20% in 2012, after stalling during the six previous years (here).  However, between 2012 and 2017, the rate fell to 15% (here). 

Ireland started out in 2012 at nearly the same prevalence, 22% (here).  But five years later it was unchanged (here), according to the Ireland Department of Health.

The difference in smoking reduction in these neighboring countries is extraordinary.  As Puddlecote observes, “this deserves more attention…You just have to wonder why the tobacco control industry and other politicians, both sides of the Irish Sea, have been so silent about it.”

Indeed.