Teen Problem

News journal 2
E-smoke break September 17, 2013
Smokers who switch to electronic cigarettes to try to kick their habit are at least as likely to succeed in quitting or cutting down as users of nicotine patches, according to research. In a first- of-its-kind study, researchers compared electronic, or e-cigarettes, with the more standard nicotine replacement therapy patches. They found levels of success were comparable, with e-cigarettes - whose effects are a subject of intense debate among health experts - more likely to help smokers who fail to cut the amount of tobacco they use.
Some experts fear e-cigarettes may be a "gateway" to nicotine addiction and tobacco smoking, while others view them as the most useful method yet of cutting back and helping would-be quitters.
While the argument rumbles on, smoking continues to kill half of all those who indulge in it.
Tobacco is responsible for six million deaths a year and the World Health Organization estimates that number could rise beyond eight million by 2030.
As well as causing lung cancer and other chronic respiratory conditions, smoking is also a major contributor to cardiovascular diseases, the world's number-one killer.
The study, published recently in The Lancet medical journal and presented at a conference in Spain, was the first to assess whether e-cigarettes are more or less effective than nicotine patches - already recognized as useful in helping people quit.
"While our results don't show any clear-cut differences in terms of quit success after six months, it certainly seems that e-cigarettes were more effective in helping smokers who didn't quit to cut down," said Chris Bullen of New Zealand's University of Auckland, who led the study.
"It's also interesting that the people who took part in our study seemed to be much more enthusiastic about e-cigarettes than patches, as evidenced by the far greater proportion of people who said they'd recommend them to family or friends."
Bullen's research team recruited 657 smokers who wanted to quit the habit and divided them into three groups.
They gave 292 of them 13 weeks' supply of commercially available e-cigarettes, each of which contained around 16mg of nicotine. The same number of participants got 13 weeks of nicotine patches, and the remaining 73 got placebo e-cigarettes containing no nicotine.

At the end of the six-month study, 5.7 percent of participants had managed to completely stop smoking for that period.

Bullen said that while the proportion of participants who quit was highest in the e-cigarettes group - at 7.3 percent compared with 5.8 percent on nicotine patches and 4.1 percent on placebo - the differences were not statistically significant, so the results were that the two products were comparable.

The study also found that among those who had not managed to quit, cigarette consumption was markedly more reduced in the nicotine e-cigarettes group, compared with both other groups.

Some 57 percent of people using e-cigarettes had cut their daily number of cigarettes smoked by at least half after six months, compared with just over 40 percent of the patches group.

Ann McNeill, a professor of tobacco addiction at the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London, said the findings should persuade health experts to embrace e-cigarettes as a useful weapon in the battle against smoking.

"Electronic cigarettes are the most exciting new development in tobacco control over the last few decades as we have witnessed a rapid uptake of these much less harmful products by smokers," she said in an e-mailed comment.

"The popularity of e-cigarettes suggests that we now have a product that can compete with cigarettes, thus heralding the first real possibility that cigarette smoking could be phased out."

Summary: Statistics shows that nowadays smoking causes over six million death in the world. Lung cancer and other chronic respiratory conditions are main diseases found because of smoking. The studies about smoking published that e-cigarettes may be more effective than nicotine patches to help smokers to cut down their habit of smoking. This shows that many people have already get used with e-cigarettes. Many scientist and experts were happy about the invention and development of e-cigarettes between smokers. Reality shows that e-cigarettes are acting an important character of helping smokers, and it’s far much better than nicotine patches. It is believed that e-cigarettes would be success soon.

Reflections/ Opinions: I believed that nowadays many people are mostly affected by second-hand smoke when we are walking on the street. And my friend’s parents also have the habit of smoking. Everyone knows that smoking is harm to our body and will affect our health, but because of the addiction of nicotine, they can’t easily stop themselves by simple ways. When I saw the topic of this news, I felt exciting and was interested in it. Because this great development of the new technique may help us a lot. Maybe a man take four cigarettes per day, they use nicotine patches to help them quitting from the addiction of it. In my opinion, why nicotine patches can’t have a apparent result? It is because smokers should be get used to hold a cigarette with their mouth. And a nicotine patch can fulfill this need of them. Different from nicotine patches, e-cigarettes got the similar size and shape of a real smoking cigarette. These properties absolutely fits the need of smokers. I feel very curious about the image of a e-cigarettes, after I read this passage, I know more about needs and functions of a e-cigarette, and the quick development of it. But I am still confused with the figure of it. Every family hope their member to get far away from nicotine, and so did I. Fewer people smoke in Hong Kong, less pollution in Hong Kong. Less pollution, a better atmosphere. A better atmosphere, a better place for us to live. Let us create a no smoke world, a wonderful land ourselves!