A large study in England has found that smokers trying to quit were substantially more likely to succeed if they used electronic cigarettes than over-the-counter therapies such as nicotine patches or gum.





These results offered encouraging but not definitive evidence in the contentious debate about the risks and benefits of these increasingly popular smoking devices.



Researchers interviewed almost 6,000 smokers who had tried to quit on their own without counselling from a health professional. About a fifth of those who said they were using e-cigarettes had stopped smoking at the time of the survey, compared with about a tenth of people who had used patches and gum.



“This will not settle the e-cigarette issue by any means,” said Thomas J Glynn, a researcher at the American Cancer Society, who was not part of the study, “But it is further evidence that, in a real-world context, e-cigarettes can be a useful, although not revolutionary, tool in helping some smokers to stop.”



Robert West, director of tobacco studies at University College London and senior author of the study, said that the need for policy decisions is now.



He calculated that more than 5,000 lives could be saved for every million smokers who switched to e-cigarettes, even if the devices carried significant health risks and people used them indefinitely after quitting real cigarettes.



