I’m A Surgeon ― Here’s Why Quitting Vaping Is So Tough

Vapes, which were originally introduced as a measure to help smokers give up ciggies, have proven a vice of their own to some. 

Per a 2023 survey, 15% of occasional or one-off vapers aged 11-17 and 32% of regular vapers in the same age group said they’d never touched a cigarette before trying a vape.

Some of the products have been criticised by the government for marketing that they see as being aimed at children. 

If you’re seeking to quit your vape pen ― which may be better than cigarettes, but which still contains addictive nicotine, and whose long-term effects haven’t been extensively studied yet ― surgeon, author, and lecturer Dr Karan Rajan says he has “some good and some bad news.” 

Why is it so hard to quit vaping?

“The good news is that there are tools that you can use” to cut down on the habit, the doctor advised. 

These include nicotine replacement therapy, prescription medications (like Varenicline), and sometimes therapy. 

But, the doctor added that “the bad news is that these are all smoking cessation tools” ― in other words, they’re usually designed for people who smoke cigarettes, rather than vape users. 

Indeed vapes themselves feature in the same list as other nicotine replacement options on the NHS’ site, as e-cigarettes were meant to be one such treatment for smokers to begin with.

“Whilst they may work for vaping too, this highlights the fact that there’s almost no high-quality research on how to quit vaping, specifically,” Dr Rajan continued.

Why is vaping so addictive?

The surgeon says that vaping is a slightly “different beast” to smoking, which is part of the reason why it’d be so useful to have more data on effective ways to give up e-cigarettes. 

That’s because they’re “more habitual” than ciggies, Dr Rajan shared ― “with cigarettes, you light one, smoke it, and move on. With vaping, you can take a puff every few minutes, turning it into an almost unconscious reflex.”

Add that to the fact that you can vape in places you wouldn’t usually smoke and it’s no wonder vaping ends up “seamlessly integrated into daily life,” the doctor says. 

That can make it “more challenging” to quit. 

The sooner quality research can be done into quitting the pens, the better, Dr Rajan added, stressing that this “isn’t just a tobacco problem with a glossy finish ― it’s a new public health frontier that requires its own solutions.”