JOEL JULIEN

A study con­duct­ed by Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty in the Unit­ed States re­veals that 70 per cent of doc­tors re­port­ed their adult smok­ing pa­tients had asked them about e-cig­a­rettes and oth­er smoke-free prod­ucts, ev­i­denc­ing an im­por­tant in­ter­est in bet­ter al­ter­na­tives than the tra­di­tion­al cig­a­rette. A third of the doc­tors al­so said their pa­tients had asked them in the past 30 days.

The study was pub­lished by the Jour­nal of The Amer­i­can Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion, one of the world's lead­ing pop­u­lar sci­ence jour­nals. Ac­cord­ing to the study, doc­tors are sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly to rec­om­mend e-cig­a­rettes for heavy smok­ers, while rec­om­mend­ing FDA-ap­proved drugs, such as nico­tine gum, for oc­ca­sion­al smok­ers.

“As the ev­i­dence grows show­ing e-cig­a­rettes as po­ten­tial­ly ef­fec­tive for smok­ing ces­sa­tion, they may play a piv­otal role in re­duc­ing use of cig­a­rettes and sub­se­quent­ly to­bac­co-caused dis­ease,” said study au­thor Michael Stein­berg, med­ical di­rec­tor of the Rut­gers To­bac­co De­pen­dence Pro­gram at the Cen­ter for To­bac­co Stud­ies and di­vi­sion chief in the De­part­ment of Med­i­cine at the Rut­gers Robert Wood John­son Med­ical School. “It’s im­por­tant to un­der­stand physi­cians’ per­spec­tives on e-cig­a­rettes as a means for harm re­duc­tion.”

Re­search re­sults sug­gest the more doc­tors un­der­stand that not all to­bac­co prod­ucts are equal­ly harm­ful, the more like­ly they are to rec­om­mend e-cig­a­rettes or oth­er smoke-free prod­ucts to peo­ple seek­ing to quit smok­ing or be­ing treat­ed for a dis­ease caused by to­bac­co.

"It is crit­i­cal to ad­dress doc­tors' mis­per­cep­tions and ed­u­cate them, in par­tic­u­lar by cor­rect­ing their mis­per­cep­tions that all to­bac­co prod­ucts are equal­ly harm­ful, as op­posed to the fact that burnt to­bac­co is by far the most dan­ger­ous," said lead au­thor Cristine Del­ne­vo, di­rec­tor of Rut­gers' Cen­ter for To­bac­co Stud­ies at the Rut­gers School of Pub­lic Health, on the study´s of­fi­cial press re­lease.

To­day, there are smoke-free prod­ucts sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly sup­port­ed as bet­ter op­tions than con­tin­u­ing to smoke, since, un­like the tra­di­tion­al cig­a­rette, they elim­i­nate the com­bus­tion process, which is the main cause of dam­age linked to smok­ing.

In re­cent years, al­ter­na­tive prod­ucts to cig­a­rettes have been de­vel­oped, such as elec­tron­ic cig­a­rettes and heat­ed to­bac­co prod­ucts, aimed at those peo­ple who will oth­er­wise con­tin­ue to smoke.