69% of the population believes that e-cigarettes can help you quit smoking – but can they?
Dr Couraud presented his findings Monday at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting in Chicago. Findings presented at meetings are generally viewed as preliminary until they’ve been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Electronic cigarettes are battery-operated products designed to create an aerosol that delivers nicotine, flavour and other chemicals when inhaled by the user.
Dr Couraud said that the public opinion his team captured appears to mirror ongoing expert debate over whether e-cigarettes can actually help people quit smoking and whether e-cigarette vapours might contain toxic chemicals.
About 69% of e-cigarette users believe the devices can help a person quit tobacco smoking, compared with just 31% of the general population, researchers found.
Many e-cigarette users genuinely appear to want to quit smoking tobacco, Dr Couraud said. They’re more likely to be worried about dying from lung
cancer than people who only smoke tobacco, he suggested. E-cigarette users are also more likely to think that using e-cigs will reduce their risk of lung
cancer death, the survey revealed.
E-cigarettes don’t help people who are addicted to nicotine, the study confirmed
The findings from this survey highlight why regulation of e-cigarettes from the US Food and Drug Administration is needed as soon as possible, said ASCO spokesperson Dr Jyoti Patel, an associate professor of haematology and oncology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.
“For people who are addicted to nicotine, e-cigarettes don’t help,” said Dr Patel. “They are still addicted, and they use a lot. It’s not a bridge to abstinence. It’s a way for them to stay addicted in a restaurant or an airplane, where they are unable to smoke.”
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And, indeed, users of e-cigarettes tend to be much more dependent on nicotine than traditional cigarette smokers, based on a standard test of nicotine addiction, Dr Couraud said. About 58% of e-cigarette users registered as very or highly addicted, compared with 46% of people who only smoked tobacco.
In January, ASCO issued a call for regulation of e-cigarettes and other electronic nicotine delivery systems, in conjunction with the American Association for
Cancer Research, Dr Patel noted.
Researchers also found that e-cigarettes pose health risks due to the toxins they contain
For the study, Dr Couraud and his colleagues surveyed nearly 1,500 residents of France. Ninety three (6%) of those surveyed were e-cigarette users, and 74 of them also still smoked tobacco cigarettes, according to the survey.
About 33% of e-cigarette users in the survey believed that the devices are effective in reducing deaths from lung
cancer, compared with 18% of smokers and 12% of the general population.
E-cigarette users also parted ways with popular opinion over whether they should worry about toxins in the vapour they inhale.
About 68% of current e-cigarette users in the study said that e-cig vapours are less harmful than cigarette smoke for the user, and 87% said the vapours pose less of a threat to those around them than second-hand cigarette smoke would.
By comparison, around 40% of the general French public felt that e-cigarette vapour is less harmful than cigarette smoke for the user, and about 55% were less concerned about e-cig vapours than cigarette smoke.
“Probably they aren’t completely wrong, because we know that e-cigarettes are less toxic than traditional cigarettes,” Dr Couraud said. “But there still is some toxicity, and they have a low awareness of that.”
Dr Couraud and Patel both said that American opinions of e-cigarettes likely are similar to those found in this French survey.
Dr Gregory Masters said he completely understands conflicted public opinion over e-cigarettes.
“I do have safety concerns for e-cigarettes because nicotine is bad for you, and we don’t know all of the risks with e-cigarettes,” said Masters, an oncologist at the Helen F. Graham
Cancer Center in Newark, US.
“But I struggle when I get asked by patients, should I use e-cigarettes? I don’t want to condone e-cigarettes as a healthy alternative, but could it be a less dangerous alternative? It could be,” he added.
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