Smokers opting for electronic cigarettes may be getting a much bigger – or smaller – hit of nicotine than they realise.
Researchers have found some e-cigarette users, or 'vapers', are getting up two-and-a-half times as much of the addictive drug from each dose then what the manufacturers claim; but others are getting ripped off with e-cigarettes containing only a third of the nicotine promised.
The amount of nicotine found in each e-cigarette was on average higher than what was found in a 2008 study.
Whether the overall rise in nicotine content is a good or bad development depends on your point of view – some experts say it will make e-cigarettes more effective at helping people quit smoking altogether, or at least convince more people to quit tobacco; while others fear it'll give e-cigarettes a stronger pull on first-time users, particularly impressionably youths, leading to more smoking overall.
The good news either way is that the e-cigarettes tested only had a fraction of the other harmful substances found in tobacco cigarettes.
The discrepancies in nicotine levels though has led to calls from medical experts for better regulation of the products, which although illegal to sell in New Zealand whether they contain nicotine or not, are widely available online.
The study was conducted by e-cigarette specialist Murray Laugesen at Health New Zealand Ltd.
Dr Laugesen tested a range of e-cigarettes purchased via the internet in 2013. Though 'high-strength' brands claimed to deliver the vaper between 16 and 18mg of nicotine, they contained anywhere between five and 46mg.
"We found differences between labelled and actual nicotine content," he wrote in the paper, published in the New Zealand Medical Journal today. "These highlight a lack of quality control that should be attended to through monitoring as part of a regulatory regimen."
But the amount found in each puff is still well below that you get from tobacco – the biggest hit in Dr Laugesen's study was 93mcg, compared to the control – a Marlboro smoke that delivered 147mcg with each breath.
Some experts believe the more efficient at delivering nicotine e-cigarettes become, the better they will be at helping people quit smoking altogether.
"If e-cigarettes are genuinely going to have a chance at replacing tobacco smoking, they need to provide nicotine in a similar way to regular cigarettes, and this study tells us that they are closer to achieving this target than they were a few years ago," says Oliver Knight-West of the National Institute for Health Innovation at the University of Auckland.
"The most robust evidence on whether e-cigarettes can help people to stop smoking used older-generation e-cigarettes, but found that they were at least as good as nicotine patches in helping smokers to quit, and that e-cigarettes with nicotine were more effective than e-cigarettes without it."
And with e-cigarettes in the study containing up to 200 times less acetaldehyde, formaldehyde and acrolein than the Marlboro, Mr Knight-West is calling on the Government to reconsider its stance.
"We of course cannot be certain that e-cigarettes are completely safe and that long-term vaping is risk-free, but we can be confident that if any negative health effects are detected, they will be very small compared to the proven dangers of tobacco smoking," he says.
"It is puzzling that the current regulatory framework around e-cigarettes in New Zealand does not take heed of the data we already have and allow the legal sale of e-cigarettes with nicotine."
The Ministry of Health doesn't yet recommend the use of e-cigarettes as a quit-smoking aid – it's still illegal to sell them with or without nicotine. It still recommends quitters use traditional aids such as nicotine patches, lozenges and gum.
"[E-cigarettes] are relatively recent products, we do not have data on their longer-term effects," says Prof Janet Hoek of the Department of Marketing at the University of Otago.
"While it is logically true that increasing trial of [e-cigarettes] may lead smokers to switch from smoking to vaping, the evidence to date suggests that dual use – mixed smoking and vaping – is a very common outcome… In other words, [e-cigarettes] appear to provide an alternative that smokers use in settings where they cannot smoke, thus reducing the imperative to quit smoking and perpetuating the risks smokers face."
Prof Hoek claims evidence from the US suggests more young people are trying e-cigarettes than traditional smokes, and that it would be "premature" for the Government to loosen the rules just yet.
"While this finding may mean young people are opting to vape rather than smoke, we do not know whether vaping serves as a gateway to smoking or remains a stable behaviour that does not increase the risk of smoked tobacco use."
But the time is right, says Mr Knight-West, if we really want to eliminate the harm caused by tobacco.
"With the right framework, e-cigarettes with nicotine could be just the breakthrough to help hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders become smoke-free and live healthier, longer lives."
3 News
source: newshub archive
