Stopping smoking is difficult; do flavoured e-liquids assist smokers transition and avoid tobacco-related harm?
Researchers from the Cancer Research Institute in Vancouver, the University of Michigan, and Georgetown University examined the evidence and determined whether they are connected with effective quit efforts.
Flavours in e-liquids are one of the most common reasons why people are resistant to vaping.
They claim that vape and cigarette businesses utilise them to get young people to start vaping.
They further claim that grownups do not require sweet or pastry flavours because they do not exist in cigarette goods.
Other than tobacco, many countries have outlawed all flavours of vape juice.
Some European countries are now seeking to prohibit them, and the next edition of the European Union’s Tobacco Products Directive is said to be severe on flavours.
This could have an impact on UK policy, albeit it appears unlikely at this time.
According to the study’s authors, Yoonseo Mok, Jihyoun Jeon, David Levy, and Rafael Meza, only a few research publications have previously examined the impact of e-cigarette flavours on cessation outcomes.
Their study aims to build on past research by examining the effects of electronic cigarette use and e-liquid flavours on the number of quit attempts and full smoking cessation success.
They examined data from the 2018-2019 Tobacco Use Supplement-Current Population Survey (TUS-CPS) in the United States.
The statistical analysis was utilised to look into the links between flavoured e-liquid use and the quitting process of those who had been smoking for at least a year.
They took into account persons who vaped every day as well as those who vaped at least 20 days per month.
“Compared to those who did not use e-cigarettes, current every day or someday e-cigarette users with non-tobacco flavours were more likely to succeed in stopping than those who exclusively used non-flavored or tobacco-flavored e-cigarettes,” they said.
Menthol/mint flavour users had somewhat better probabilities of quitting and succeeding than other non-tobacco flavour users.”
They came to the conclusion that using vape goods and eliquids “is favourably associated with both making a smoking quit attempt and quitting successfully.”
They stated that their findings clearly demonstrated that smokers looking to quit would have the most success using flavoured juices, particularly menthol and mint flavours.
With e-cigarette use being associated with both making quit attempts and successfully quitting smoking, and flavour use being strongly associated with successful quit attempts, further analysis revealed no statistical difference between using menthol/mint flavours and any other products such as pastry and sweet juices.
If flavours are banned, “the potential for e-cigarettes to help people who currently smoke quit could be maintained with the availability of menthol or mint flavoured e-cigarettes, even if other non-tobacco flavoured products, which are associated with e-cigarette use among youth, are removed from the market,” according to the team.
The work’s most important takeaway is that vaping works as a quit help, and flavours are critical to that process.
Which flavoured e-liquid worked best for you?