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A Florida cancer research centre has been given $3.6m (€3.3m) for a long-running study of how e-cigarettes are used by consumers and whether they help vapers quit tobacco.
The project by the Moffitt Cancer Center, a nonprofit treatment and research institution established by Florida’s state government, will also involve academics interviewing vapers to learn about their experiences and perceptions of e-cigarettes.
The five-year study will eventually follow 2500 e-cigarette users throughout the U.S.
The first year will consist of interviews with current and former smokers who are also current or former e-cigarette users. After that, 2500 users will be signed up for a longer-term look at usage over 24 months through surveys every three months.
“Millions of smokers are using e-cigarettes to try to quit smoking, yet because there is a lack of data, we are not able to advise them whether that is an effective smoking cessation strategy. This study should provide some answers that will be very useful to smokers as they consider ways to quit,” said Thomas Brandon, director of the tobacco research and intervention programme at Moffitt.
The grant was given by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The Moffitt Cancer Center is one of 41 organisations that have been given a Comprehensive Cancer Center designation by the National Cancer Institute, the NIH agency in control of research and other areas related to the treatment of cancer.
What This Means: More research into the efficacy of e-cigarettes as a smoking cessation tool is certainly needed, and this study will be particularly important because of the long period over which it tracks users. We hope the researchers will differentiate among types of e-cigarette and their respective abilities to help people quit, given that the lack of these distinctions has been a criticism of previous studies in the same area.
– Freddie Dawson ECigIntelligence staff
Photo: Elycefeli
