(Photo: Christopher Bethell, via)
Here's that supporting quote from a doctor you wanted, too:Thousands of people appear to have been helped to quit smoking by using e-cigarettes, according to new study hailed by campaigners as a sign that the controversial device is helping to improve people's health.
The researchers, from University College London (UCL) and Cancer Research UK, estimated that 18,000 people in England became "long-term ex-smokers" in 2015 as a result of taking up vaping.
They said that attempts to stop smoking had stayed roughly the same, but e-cigarette use was associated with a greater chance of success.
This comes a week after a Cochrane Report found that – tentatively, at least, because we're only about two years into The Great Vape Era and data is thin on the ground for now – that smoking e-cigarettes doesn't have any short- or mid-term impact on your health. There's a little offshoot of research that has found that smoking an e-cig with nicotine in it jolts the same vessel in the heart that smoking real cigarettes does, and further studies are a little muddled on whether e-cig usage alone is enough to make you quit smoking, but other than vaping seems mostly okay. To reiterate: for your health, at least. Vaping has an appalling effect on your outward cool, an impact science has yet to collect data on and study.But one of the researchers, Professor Robert West, of UCL's Health Behaviour Research Centre, said: "England is sometimes singled out as being too positive in its attitude to e-cigarettes.
"This data suggests that our relatively liberal regulation of e-cigarettes is probably justified."