• Posted January 10, 2025

The Best Ways to Quit Vaping

Text-based support programs are one of the best ways to help young people quit vaping, a new evidence review says.

These texts offer motivational messages and tips for quitting vaping.

“I think it’s clear that this approach helps young people,” senior researcher Jamie Hartmann-Boyce, an assistant professor of health policy and management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said in a news release from the college. “The question is, is it going to help other populations?”

The review also found evidence that the quit-smoking drug varenicline might also help folks quit vaping.

However, there still aren’t enough studies available to point to any concrete, tried-and-true methods for quitting vaping, researchers said in a study published Jan. 8 in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews..

“This is an area of research that is in its infancy, but is growing rapidly and organically from people who vape asking about help to quit vaping,” Hartmann-Boyce said.

Previous reviews have found that e-cigarettes can help people quit smoking more effectively than other nicotine replacements like patches, gums or lozenges, researchers said.

But what to do when one wants to quit vaping, which also involves nicotine addiction?

“We also know that people who use vaping as a way to transition away from smoking are often keen to know how they can safely transition away from vaping without relapsing to smoking, which is really important,” Hartmann-Boyce said.

For the review, researchers identified nine previous clinical trials involving more than 5,000 participants.

They found strong evidence for the effectiveness of text-based quitting support, and some evidence supporting varenicline.

Varenicline works by stimulating nicotine receptors in the brain, thus reducing nicotine cravings and withdrawal symptoms.

Evidence regarding other nicotine replacement therapies to help quit vaping indicated some possible benefit, but were too imprecise and at risk of bias to make any conclusion, researchers said.

Armed with this review, “healthcare professionals now have initial evidence for specific approaches they can recommend, particularly for younger people wanting to quit vaping,” co-lead author Alisa Butler, a postdoctoral researcher with the University of Oxford, said in a news release. “However, we urgently need more research to explore these and other approaches.”

More information

The American Lung Association has more on how to quit vaping.

SOURCE: University of Massachusetts Amherst, news release, Jan. 7, 2025