Giving Out Free Vapes At Emergency Rooms Helps U.K. Smokers Quit

Members of the public given free e-cigarettes at emergency rooms are far more likely to quit smoking than those given literature alone, research has shown.

A trial of nearly 1,000 smokers waiting in ERs at 6 U.K. hospitals found a 76% increase in quitting among those given vapes.

As well as an e-cigarette starter pack, researchers gave thes participants smoking advice and referred them to local ‘stop smoking’ services.

A control group were given only written advice about local stop smoking services.

Six months on and almost a quarter of those given vapes said they’d quit, compared to about 13% in the control group, results published this week in Emergency Medical Journal show.

Those given vapes who hadn’t quit were more likely to have tried to than those in the control group. They also tended to be smoking fewer cigarettes a day than when they were first approached.

Absolute rates of quitting — confirmed by carbon monoxide breath tests — were still relatively low among both groups, at 7.2% in the vape group and 4.1% in the control group.

Vapes ‘Much Less Harmful’ Than Tobacco

Although vaping is not without its harms, public health experts consider smoking much more dangerous, and a far greater burden for the country’s health system. Vaping has long been used as a public health tool to help U.K. smokers quit.

“About half of all people who smoke will die prematurely, losing on average 10 years of life, and for every death caused by smoking, approximately 30 more people are suffering from a smoking-related disease,” said trial co-lead and University of East Anglia researcher Caitlin Notley in a statement. “We know that [e-cigarettes] are much less harmful than smoking tobacco, and that they have been shown to help smokers quit.”

Co-author and fellow UEA researcher Ian Pope added: “Smoking killed almost 75,000 people in the U.K. in 2019 and it is the leading cause of preventable death and disease in the U.K. Swapping to e-cigarettes could save thousands of lives.”

In fact, the team think their scheme could help more than 22,000 more people quit smoking every year if implemented widely.

Targeting Emergency Rooms

As well as supporting the use of vapes as quitting tool, the trial showed the potential of intervening in hospital emergency rooms.

Around a quarter of the people who attend U.K. ERs smoke, so researchers thought they could be an effective place to target.

“The emergency department offers a chance to reach people who may not otherwise be motivated to quit, or who might not have the knowledge or resources to access stop smoking services,” Pope said.

It also might help reach more deprived groups, who are disproportionately affected by smoking-related illness.

Trial participants tended to live in “neighbourhoods with high levels of deprivation,” Pope said, with “more people were unemployed or unable to work due to sickness or disability than the average.”

“Policy makers should seriously consider it as a location for smoking cessation interventions,” he added.

Lion Shahab, who co-directs the University College London Tobacco and Alcohol Research Group praised the reseach for exploring a “brief intervention” that could “easily implemented in existing healthcare delivery to make use of the time spent waiting.”

The researcher, who was not involved in the trial, said in a statement that it could have a positive impact on health inequalities “as it will reach smokers from more disadvantaged backgrounds who are more likely to attend emergency rooms.”

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