OHIO — A recent study involving Ohio State researchers shows quitline coaching over the phone helped many young people ditch their vaping habit.

What You Need To Know

  • Nearly 80% of the participants vaped daily before starting the study

  • Three months into the study, 45% of young adults aged 18 to 24 ditched their vaping habit

  • OSU researchers say the data is promising to help develop methods to help young people quit vaping without having to rely on another source of tobacco

The study included 500 participants who were recruited through social media, according to OSU. They had to complete at least one of two coaching calls during the study.

Nearly 80% of them vaped daily, and just three months after joining the study, 45% of young adults aged 18 to 24 reported they were no longer vaping.

The authors said the findings are enlightening for research surrounding ending vaping habits, which they said has little data at the moment.

“This study provides hope that young adult vapers want to quit and can be successful in breaking their addiction to nicotine,” said Liz Klein, a researcher at OSU’s College of Public Health and a co-author of the study. “This is such an essential group for disruption of that behavior on or before they enter into more established adulthood.”

The authors of the study also randomly assigned the participants to four options of intervention to see which method worked best. The four were:

  • Phone-based quitline coaching
  • Quitline coaching plus mailed nicotine replacement therapy
  • Coaching plus mHealth (mobile intervention offering texts and other resources)
  • Coaching, nicotine replacement and mHealth support

All of them had a high success rate, the researchers said, which didn’t allow them to narrow down just one method being most effective overall. However, the data shows quitline phone coaching was a strong option for young people who want to break their vaping habits.

Their data also showed mailing nicotine replacement therapy could increase the chances of stopping the habit completely.

Study participants said they would recommend quitline phone calls, which was opposite of what researchers had hypothesized, thinking younger people might want texts rather than calls.

The U.S. Surgeon General declared e-cigarette use an epidemic in 2016 after reports of an increase of vaping among teens and young adults.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as of October 2024, youth in the U.S. used vapes or e-cigarettes the most compared to any other tobacco product.

The 2024 National Youth Tobacco Survey showed 5.9% of middle and high school students use e-cigarettes, which is 1.63 million students. In 2020, the CDC reported 63.9% of students who were using e-cigarettes at that time wanted to quit.  

According to the American Lung Association, it’s a common misconception that e-cigarettes are healthier than cigarettes. The reality is that e-cigarettes can have damaging health effects, too.

The American Lung Association states e-cigarettes can cause irreversible lung damage and alter teen brains, contain harmful products known to cause cancer (like formaldehyde and acrolein — a weed killer), and the aerosol in e-cigarettes can make you more likely to catch colds or the flu.

“We want to know how we can help young people not develop a lifelong addiction to nicotine, and how to make sure they’re not switching to cigarettes, which comes with such a high toll in terms of both death and disease,” Klein said.

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