E-cigarettes' main purpose of helping smokers quit might have been achieved in England, as smokers' success rates of quit attempts increased, a new study found.
In a new study published in the British Medical Journal, the researchers from the University College London found that the more people in England engaged in vaping, the better the odds of smokers will succeed in their attempts to stem cigarette smoking.
The study investigators analysed data on about 80,000 smokers, all of which are part of England's Smoking Toolkit Study between 2006 and 2015. In 2006, about 10.6 percent of quits attempts were successful. By 2015, the rate increased to 18.6 percent.
At the same time, e-cigarettes users increased from zero in 2006 to about 21.3 percent in 2015.
"With quit attempts at 32.5% of eight million smokers (2.6 million) in 2015, and prevalence of e-cigarette use in quit attempts at 36% in that year, this equates to 54,288 additional short to medium term quitters in 2015 compared with no use of e-cigarettes in quit attempts," the researchers wrote.
In fact, the findings of the study show that e-cigarettes may have helped an estimated 18,000 long-term smokers in the U.K. to quit smoking. The researchers said that the use of e-cigarettes may have influenced this trend.
Smoking has always been a big predicament in the country with latest statistics showing that approximately 19 percent of adults in Great Britain are now smoking. This is about 9.6 million adults who smoke. About two-thirds of smokers would like to quit smoking but only about 30 to 40 percent are successful in quitting in a given year, the Action on Smoking and Health reports.
While the most effective way to quit smoking is through prescription medications and professional help, the increasing use of e-cigarettes has been contributing to success attempts among smokers. E-cigarettes may actually help curb smoking, which has been linked to about 96,000 deaths in the U.K.
