Want to quit vaping this year? Here’s what the evidence shows so far about effective strategies
- Written by The Conversation
Lots of people who vape want to quit, but there’s very little guidance on how best to do so.
In the U.S., recent reports estimate that 5.9% of youth and 4.5% of adults currently vape. This proportion varies worldwide, however. In Britain, an estimated 7.8% of youth and 11% of adults vape. Vaping nicotine is addictive, and more and more research is being done to find out how best to quit.
On Jan. 8, 2025, a team of specialists on tobacco use and health policy published a report that draws together the available scientific evidence on how best to support people to quit vaping nicotine. The Conversation asked health policy professor Jamie Hartmann-Boyce from UMass Amherst and tobacco control researchers Ailsa Butler and Nicola Lindson from the University of Oxford – who all authored the report – to explain its key takeaways.
“Cochrane reviews” like this one are often considered the gold standard in evidence. They bring together all the available studies in a certain area and assess their results and how trustworthy they are. They are used by clinicians and policymakers worldwide.
What are the main strategies for quitting vaping?
Our report focuses on strategies for helping people stay vape-free for six months or longer.
We found that text message-based interventions may help young people to stop vaping nicotine. These programs typically provide encouragement, support and practical advice on quitting, delivered directly to people’s cellphones.
All the evidence on these programs came from one text message-based program in particular, called This Is Quitting. People can sign up to this program, which will then send them daily automated, interactive text messages supporting them in quitting.
The length of the program depends on the individual. So far, studies have tested this intervention only in adolescents and young adults. More evidence is needed to see whether these programs work in older adults and whether other text-messaging programs work as well.
Another promising approach for quitting vaping that we identified through the study is the drug varenicline, marked as Chantix in the U.S. and some other countries. This is a pill that is available only with a prescription and that numerous studies have shown is effective for quitting smoking. Varenicline works by blocking the “rewarding” effects of nicotine. More evidence is needed to understand how effective the drug is for quitting vaping and whether it has any serious side effects when used for this purpose.
Varenicline appeared to double the chances of successfully quitting, compared with people receiving no medication for quitting. The text-message intervention appeared to increase the chances of successfully quitting vaping by about 30%.
These were the only two strategies for which there is sufficient evidence that they can help people quit for six months or more, but more studies are underway.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers a free helpline for those looking to stop vaping.How harmful is vaping?
For people who smoke, evidence shows that switching to nicotine vaping can improve their health and help them stay smoke-free.
However, though less harmful than smoking, nicotine vaping is likely to cause more harm than not vaping or smoking.
People who’ve used vaping to quit smoking are advised to ultimately quit vaping, too. There are also lots of people who vape nicotine who’ve never smoked – for them, vaping nicotine may be harmful.
Many people who want to quit vaping also want to save money and be addiction-free.
When it comes to pinning down the health harms of vaping nicotine, it’s impossible to make sweeping statements. The risks of vaping vary a lot, depending on the device type and on what the liquid within the vape contains.
People who vape should make sure they are using products that have been regulated and tested – in the U.S., for example, the Food and Drug Administration has authorized marketing of some nicotine vaping products as appropriate for the protection of public health.
Vaping liquids with substances other than nicotine, such as cannabis or opioids, comes with very different risks than vaping nicotine.
Are there clear recommendations from the report?
It’s hard to make firm recommendations on how to quit vaping nicotine because researchers like us don’t yet have enough evidence. The evidence researchers do have is most promising for the text-message program, specifically when used by younger people, and for the drug varenicline, which people can get a prescription for from their health care providers.
There is some evidence that the drug cytisine might help, too, but it’s not yet available in the U.S. Like varenicline, cytisine works by blocking the rewarding effects of nicotine.
With smoking, people often have to try to quit many times before succeeding. Therefore, if you want to quit vaping nicotine, and have tried before but it hasn’t worked, don’t be discouraged.
We researchers know that people are most likely to succeed in quitting smoking if they use a combination of medications and behavioral support – for example, from a health care provider or a stop-smoking adviser. The same may be the case for quitting vaping. If you want to quit, reaching out to your health care provider or a stop-smoking or stop-vaping service is likely to be a good place to start.
How do quitting strategies differ for those who vape versus smoke?
Most of the interventions that have been tested to help people quit vaping are the same as those that researchers know work to help people quit smoking.
There isn’t yet enough evidence to say for sure whether the interventions that help people stop smoking work for vaping, and whether they have any potential harms. It could be that vaping-specific interventions, like changing the characteristics of your e-cigarette – such as by reducing the amount of nicotine in it – could help people quit vaping. But more research is needed.
Those who started vaping to help quit smoking need to make sure that quitting vaping is not going to cause them to go back to smoking.
Smoking cigarettes is more harmful than vaping regulated, nicotine-containing vapes, because the diseases caused by smoking are caused by the burning of tobacco. Vaping does not involve burning anything. Therefore, cigarettes should never be used to help people stop vaping.
There are stories of people doing this, but no one has ever tested this in a study because it would be immoral to do so. Cigarettes kill 1 in 2 users who don’t quit and harm others nearby through secondhand smoke. Their harms far outweigh any perceived benefits.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers a free helpline for those looking to quit tobacco use – as part of this, they provide stop-vaping support.
