"E-cigarettes have the potential to accelerate the decline in smoking." This is supported by Dr Gary Chen of the National Youth Substance Use Research Centre at the University of Queensland, Australia. "Global scientific evidence supports the growth in the use of e-cigarettes to help smokers quit," Chen said. These include a systematic review he conducted with eight colleagues from the same Australian university and published in the journal Addictive Behaviour.

The work, titled "A systematic review of randomized controlled trials and network meta-analyses of e-cigarettes for smoking cessation," aimed to compare nicotine e-cigarettes based on well-established nicotine (e.g. as a patch, gum, oral spray, and inhaler) ) and placebo devices (such as nicotine-free e-cigarettes). The researchers looked at the existing scientific literature on the topic on PubMed, Web of Science and PsycInfo and selected only studies in healthy smokers.

The results are almost beyond doubt. "Our study found - explained by the first author - that e-cigarettes are 50% more effective than nicotine replacement therapy and 100% more effective than placebo". An important conclusion, also because it comes from scientific work done in a country like Australia, where the government's stance is by no means limited to vaping. “We hope that the results of this study (reviewed by Edison Chen) will be used to better target smoking and smoking policy.” He concluded: “E-cigarettes have the potential to accelerate the decline in smoking. Scientific evidence must be used to reconsider how to use its potential to end the smoking epidemic".