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How to help young people quit smoking electronic cigarettes?

How to help young people quit smoking electronic cigarettes?


Of
Elena Munarini

The tools we already have for tabagism, that is, the pharmacological support combined with psychological counseling, remain a valid starting point to help new young smokers

I am a former smoker and mother: I see that many young people, even among my son’s friends, smoke electronic cigarettes. Do these devices give the same dependence on combustion cigarettes?

Respond Elena Munarinipsychologist and psychotherapist, anti -smoking center of the National Cancer Institute, Milan (Go to the forum)

Although Electronic cigarettes they were theoretically born to offer smokers less harmful alternatives (possibility that the most recent studies are still disavowing), the marketing of these products has increasingly oriented to teenagers and young adults, obtaining a diffusion that generates, year by year, growing alarm. In fact, consumption increases vertiginously: according to the latest Espad data (the study of the CNR of Pisa which monitors risk behaviors between secondary school students) The use of electronic cigarettes in 2023 reached 37% between students between 15 and 19 years old, the highest data ever.

The Varenicline drug

The question about which type of assistance to offer to stop « vapare » (as the use of electronic cigarettes is defined)) is with increasing urgency because it is a type of new subjects: they are young people dependent on a nicotine chemically recreated and therefore different, paid with different devices. Several scientific studies begin to be published in this regard, among which a very recent and well -conducted one offers encouraging perspectives. It is an American, randomized study, in which it was investigated for the first time the effectiveness of a drug already in use for tobagism, vareniclinain the cessation of the vapus in young people between 16 and 25 years old who did not use traditional cigarettes.

The US study

The first group was given the drug accompanied by psychological counseling, to the second placebo always with psychological counseling and only psychological counseling in the third. The results were rather clear: The subjects of the first group after three months had ceased the use of e-cig in 51% of cases against 14% of the placebo group, while after 6 months in 28% and 7% of cases respectively; The group that received only counseling has achieved results similar to the group with placebo (6% to 3 months and 4% at 6 months).

Contact the anti -smoking centers

This study clearly shows that the tools we already have in use for tobagism, that is Pharmacological support combined with psychological counselingthey remain a valid starting point to help new young smokers who increasingly realize that they have fallen into an equally strong dependence than that given by tobacco and who want to stop. The invitation to these young people is therefore, once again, to turn to the Anti -theft centers because there they will find a valid helpwhile we researchers remain the task of continuing to update and adapt our work to users of different types to keep up with The whole range of new nicotine products who are spreading above all among young people.

May 26, 2025

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