Nicotine vaping products (NVPs) could be the best tool that any motivated smoker can use to quit the habit, according to a commentary published in Nature Medicine.
Health experts from Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) Hollings Cancer Center, working with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), urge the use of NVPs as stop-smoking tools for any motivated smoker after they’ve attempted first-line quitting solutions such as nicotine replacement therapy (NRT).
Dr. Benjamin Toll, director of the MUSC Health Tobacco Treatment Program, and Dr. Tracy Smith, associate professor in the Addiction Sciences Division of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, published the Nature commentary to discuss the relative risks of e-cigarettes compared to traditional cigarettes.
According to Dr. Toll, their commentary must not be mistaken as a claim that NVPs have zero health risks. Their point of view is that NVPs have lower risks than cigarettes, which makes them a viable quitting tool with proper guidance.
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Their commentary notes that NVPs, while clearly not appropriate for use by teenagers and children, could be a better alternative for smokers who are motivated to quit and have previously failed to quit using first-line solutions. According to Dr. Toll, “It really bothered me that there are well-intentioned, smart health care providers who think that e-cigarettes are worse than smoking cigarettes. It’s simply not true.”
As the current president of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco, Dr. Toll wants to go beyond the perceived notions of NVPs and let patients and GPs have an expanded perspective on the options they have to stop smoking – or keep off from cigarettes at the very least.
Dr. Smith also agrees on expanding the conversation around the stop-smoking tools available today: “Doctors and other health care professionals don’t know what to say or how to talk about it.
“I always say, ‘If you have somebody who smokes cigarettes, they are standing in a convenience store every single day, buying the most harmful tobacco product they could possibly be buying.’ And it’s a real injustice not to say to them, ‘Hey, there are nicotine products you could buy every day that would be a whole lot less likely to kill you.’”
Dr. Toll and Dr. Smith are both referring to the 23 NVPs currently approved and authorized by the FDA in the United States. These brands have been assessed by the FDA and authorised for sale to the public.
In Australia, there are no TGA-approved NVPs. The TGA has banned the importation and sale of non-therapeutic NVPs in the country, the products you have probably seen sold in groceries, corner stores and even tobacconists.
However, since 1 March 2024, motivated smokers can now purchase high-quality NVPs through a pharmacy with a GP’s prescription. The therapeutic NVPs available from pharmacies are made with much higher standards than non-therapeutic vapes and meet the TGA’s standards for therapeutic vaping products.
While many GPs can now prescribe therapeutic NVPs to motivated smokers, many are still considering its usefulness. Dr. Smith encourages all medical practitioners to consider how NVPs can help their patients stop smoking or at the very least keep motivated smokers away from the harms of cigarettes.
“For me, because cigarettes are responsible for the vast majority of the deaths and illnesses from tobacco, I think that having less harmful alternatives out there for adults, especially if we can reduce the appeal to youth, is really important.”