Smokers who switch to e-cigs are 10% more likely to relapse and use cigarettes ...

Smokers who switch to e-cigs are 10% more likely to relapse and use cigarettes ...
Smokers who switch to e-cigs are 10% more likely to relapse and use cigarettes ...

E-cigarettes have been promoted as devices that can help a person ditch tobacco entirely - but they may not be having the positive effects that many think are.

Researchers from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) conducted a multi-year study to determine if people who switched to e-cigarettes were able to drop all tobacco use in the near future.

Instead, they found e-cigarettes were not effective at getting a person to stop smoking traditional cigarettes.

People who dropped cigarettes for another tobacco product in an attempt to quit were around 42 percent likely to have quit tobacco a year later.

Those who dropped all tobacco, instead of trying to ween themselves off using products like e-cigarettes, were 50 percent likely to have quit a year later 

This means vape users were more 10 percent more likely to relapse than those who quit all tobacco products.

While e-cigarettes have been promoted as an effective way to ween a person off of cigarettes, a study finds that they are not any more effective at preventing. More than 50% of people who dropped tobacco did not relapse within the next year compared to 42% of those who used tobacco-based replacement

While e-cigarettes have been promoted as an effective way to ween a person off of cigarettes, a study finds that they are not any more effective at preventing. More than 50% of people who dropped tobacco did not relapse within the next year compared to 42% of those who used tobacco-based replacement

'Our findings suggest that individuals who quit smoking and switched to e-cigarettes or other tobacco products actually increased their risk of a relapse back to smoking over the next year by 8.5 percentage points compared to those who quit using all tobacco products,' said Dr John Pierce, first author of the study and professor at UCSD, in a statement.

'Quitting is the most important thing a smoker can do to improve their health, but the evidence indicates that switching to e-cigarettes made it less likely, not more likely, to stay off of cigarettes.'

Researchers, who published their findings Tuesday in read more from dailymail.....

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