Study finds E-cigarettes don’t help smokers quit

[NoOneMan]

148. The OP study is of ~1000 current smokers

The e-cig users were a smaller subset of such.

BTW, both of your links are to the same study.

Regarding: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130908135623.htm

The entire premise "which evaluates e-cigarettes, and is the first ever trial to assess whether e-cigarettes are more or less effective than an established smoking cessation aid, nicotine patches, in helping smokers to quit." is strange. We know that nicotine patches are not in fact useful smoking cessation aids when used in non-clinical over-the-counter settings for long term cessation (Pierce et al 2002, Kotz et al 2013). While the difference between them is "statistically insignificant" according to the study (garbage A equals garbage B) the surprise to me is the placebo was lagging. And that is something that is interesting in itself. What this study needed though was probably a control group of people who were to quit smoking without a cessation aid to compare if these devices were useful or not.

Further, the voluntary personal choosing of "cold turkey" vs cessation aid in a non clinical study may in itself have some type of prediction on success rates. That choice has some psychological significance in itself that can't really be captured in this type of a study.

Yes, the issue is very complicated in general. Another complication in the harm reduction area comes into play if non-smoking vapors have a tendency to become cigarette consumers. And further, if such a group exists, would these same people consume cigarettes if they were never introduced in the first place to nicotine via e-cigarettes. We don't have the full picture yet.