A new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association: Internal Medicine may be bad news for e-cigarette manufacturers and marketers. One of the big selling points for e-digs has been that they are supposed to help you quit smoking. But, according to the new study, they do nothing of the sort.

The report states:

“A longitudinal, international study found that, although 85% of smokers who used e-cigarettes reported using them to quit, e-cigarette users did not quit more frequently than nonusers.”

In fact, the news is even worse than that:

“One randomized trial comparing e-cigarettes with and without nicotine with a nicotine patch found no differences in 6-month quit rates. Among US quit line callers, e-cigarette users were less likely to have quit at 7 months than nonusers.”

Use of e-cigarettes, or “vaping” – a reference to the nicotine vapor emitted by the product rather than smoke – is not currently regulated by the Federal government, though that is going to change soon.

“I agree with [the study’s authors] that sellers of e-cigarettes should not be able to advertise them as smoking cessation devices without sufficient evidence that they are effective for this indication,” Michael Katz, editor of the Journal, wrote.

Another study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association: Pediatrics says that kids and teens who use e-cigarettes are actually more likely to be smokers.

“Use of e-cigarettes was associated with higher odds of ever or current cigarette smoking, higher odds of established smoking, higher odds of planning to quit smoking among current smokers, and, among experimenters, lower odds of abstinence from conventional cigarettes. Use of e-cigarettes does not discourage, and may encourage, conventional cigarette use among US adolescents.”

They went on to show that current e-cigarette use was positively associated with later smoking cigarettes.

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