ECST reveals King’s College London confirm e-cigarettes help quit smoking

The following is a press release by ECST Thailand. Their opinions and writing are their own-Editor

ECST reveals King’s College London confirm e-cigarettes help quit smoking, and claims that Thailand fails to reduce the number of adult smokers because of bias against science

ECST cites a recent King’s College London Study which shows a clear benefit of using e-cigarettes daily help quit smoking. The group points to authority bias information attributed to the country’s smoking reduction-stalled rate and urges the government to set up a neutral scientific-based research expert of an institute for an all-round study.

Asa Saligupta, a representative of End Cigarette Smoke Thailand (ECST) and the What is E-cigarettes Facebook page’s admin revealed the recent scientific-based evidence from King’s College London, a world-leading research institute, which confirms the ‘clear benefit’ of using e-cigarettes daily in order to quit smoking, supports their effectiveness when compared to other methods of quitting, including nicotine replacement therapy or medication.

“The recent study from England shows that e-cigarettes are an effective aid to quit smoking. According to the country data, over 50 thousand people can quit smoking by using e-cigarettes. If Thailand wants to get the same result, we need to consider revoking the ban on e-cigarettes and properly support the use as a better alternative for smokers and eventually help them quit smoking. To offer the alternative means better chances to quit when all else has failed to reduce the smoking rate in Thailand, where over 70,000 people died every year from conventional smoking-related causes. The number is  massive, it’s 100 times higher than the country’s recent Covid-19 death toll.” Asa said.

According to the article recently published in Addiction, a medical journal in England, Dr. Máirtín McDermott and his research team at King’s College conducted an online survey of more than 1,155 people between 2012 and 2017, and data analyzed the effectiveness of e-cigarettes and other nicotine substituted products in aiding abstinence from smoking for at least one month at follow-up. The study shows e-cigarettes can help people effectively quit smoking as 5 times higher than those with no help at all. The result propels researchers calling for public health organizations to should be factored into any future guidance around their use when it comes to smoking reduction policy’s improvement.

“Our results show that when used daily, e-cigarettes help people to quit smoking, compared to no help at all. These findings are in line with previous research, showing that e-cigarettes are a more effective aid for quitting than nicotine replacement therapy and prescribed medication.”  Dr Máirtín McDermott said.  Dr. McDermott is a Research Fellow at King’s College London’s National Addiction Centre and the lead author of the study.

Marit Karunyawat, another ECST representative says “ England is one of 66 countries who legalized e-cigarettes, if the products are deadly harmful they certainly would not have allowed people to use them. In contrast to Thailand where anti-smoking campaigners are endorsed to generate one side of the story. Even TRC -Tobacco Control Research and Knowledge Management Center, who are supposed to generate all-around scientific-based information to people, blindly supported the news that e-cigarettes cause death in the USA as known as EVALI or E-cigarette or Vaping Product Use-Associated Lung Injury. This half-truth story related to EVALI excluded the fact confirmed by US CDC that the primary cause of death was not from standardized e-cigarettes but the vitamin E acetate, an additive in some THC-containing e-cigarette, or vaping, products, was strongly linked to the EVALI outbreak.  Further damaged by the TRC  biased information during the Covid-19 pandemic is rather irresponsible and fear-ridden campaign than fact-based education.”