Six million in EU quit with e-cigs

An estimated 6.1 million EU citizens have quit smoking by switching to vaping, according to a story by Kaleigh Rogers for Vice media citing a paper published online this week in Addiction.

The study highlights the need for more data on how useful vaping might be as a stop smoking aid.

As part of the study, researchers made a close analysis of data collected in 2014 and released last year through the European Commission.

The Commission data indicated that two percent of respondents were currently using electronic cigarettes, and 14 percent had been able to quit smoking completely by switching to vaping.

However, the figures included any smoker who had tried just one puff of an electronic cigarette, which could not be considered to be a sustained effort to quit.

In the Addiction paper, the researchers broke down the numbers further and found a more impressive quit rate.

When they looked at respondents who were currently using electronic cigarettes, 35 percent were former smokers who had successfully quit.

The researchers extrapolated their figures to the total EU population and estimated 6.1 million people had quit through vaping, and 9.2 million had been able to cut back on smoking by becoming dual users.