Dublin taxi driver Bernard Fitzsimons, who is 56, gave up smoking a year ago, after taking up e-cigarettes. He smoked about 10 packets a week, but went down to three cigarettes a day and then gave them up altogether.
“This is the first time I’ve given them up and I’ve been smoking 40 years,” he says, even though he tried probably 20 times before. His wife, Trish, also smoked for 40 years but had never tried to give up cigarettes before.
“She tried the e-cigarettes about eight months ago and has never looked back since,” says Fitzsimons. Now they tell everyone about them.
However, the medical community is divided about e-cigarettes. Some look on them as positive, and some want to wait and see what evidence emerges, while still others are convinced they will harm the fight against tobacco.
Last month, the first large study, looking at how effective e-cigarettes are in the bid to quit smoking, came out. The study, published in the journal Addiction, found that people trying to quit without medical help are 60 per cent more likely to report success if they use e-cigs. This was compared with relying on willpower alone or shop-bought nicotine-replacement therapies such as patches or gum.
“There has been a huge rise in e-cigarettes,” says study author Prof Robert West of University College London, with one million smokers in England alone trying them in an effort to stop smoking.
The study surveyed 5,863 smokers in England between 2009 and 2014. Some 20 per cent of people trying to quit smoking while using e-cigarettes reported having stopped smoking tobacco. This compared with 15.4 per cent for those relying on willpower and 10.1 per cent for those on nicotine replacements.
Source: Anthony King, Irish Times, 03/06/14
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