A new survey by the Independent European Vape Alliance (IEVA) has been released, finding that 81% of smokers who have made the switch to vaping have now completely kicked their smoking habit.
About the survey
The survey included 3300 e-cigarette users from across Europe, and addressed the perception and use of vaping products.
E-cigarettes are quickly becoming one of the most popular stop smoking aids available, and have been found to be extremely effective at helping smokers make a successful quit attempt.
In order to continue to drop smoking rates, it is important to ensure that the correct facts about e-cigarettes are widely available to smokers, and after years of misinformation in the media, it seems that the facts are finally being set straight. 86% of the participants correctly believed e-cigarettes to be less harmful than smoking tobacco, which is something that has been repeatedly confirmed by research, including by Public Health England, who endorse e-cigarettes as being 95% less harmful than smoking. Only 2% of the survey participants incorrectly believed e-cigarettes to be as harmful, or more harmful, than smoking.
Are flavoured e-liquids important?
This is a question that is asked over and over when discussing e-cigarettes; is it important that flavoured e-liquids are available, or are they just a fad to draw people in? Recent research has answered this with a resounding yes, they are important!
While some countries are considering flavour bans as a way to regulate the vaping industry, research is showing that actually these flavours are crucial to the effectiveness of e-cigarettes as a stop smoking aid.
Of the 3300 participants, 40% reported using a fruit flavoured e-liquid, and a further 25% reported other sweet flavours as their preference. While a third of the e-cigarette users who took part in the IEVA survey reported using a tobacco flavoured e-liquid, many vapers find that a non-tobacco flavour is more effective precisely because it doesn’t remind them of the taste of cigarettes,
Although a flavour ban is not something that is on the cards in the UK, where health authorities widely endorse e-cigarettes as an alternative to smoking, it is something that is already in place in some EU countries, and being discussed in others.
When asked how they would react if a flavour ban was introduced in their home country, only 20% of vapers said they would switch to tobacco flavours. 31% stated that they would instead turn to the black market in order to continue purchasing the flavours they like, a dangerous move considering that these illicit e-liquids are not regulated and could have been produced with no quality control or consideration for safety. Another 9% said that they would simply go back to smoking, which would also be disastrous considered the dangers associated with smoking.
Speaking about the findings, Dustin Dahlmann, President of IEVA stated;
“Our survey confirms previous research that e-cigarette flavours are crucial for adult smokers. A flavour ban must be avoided at all costs, because it would lead many vapers to buy unregulated products on the black market or to start smoking again. And this would endanger the greated opportunity that many more smokers will stop smoking with the help of the e-cigarette.”
To learn more about the statistics around e-cigarettes, and how they can be used as an aid to a stop smoking attempt, head over to our blog or our online vape store.
