Dual Use: Why Cutting Back With E-Cigarettes Doesn't Protect Your Health

What dual use is

Some people try to cut back on cigarettes, or work toward quitting, by using e-cigarettes, smokeless tobacco or other tobacco products alongside regular cigarettes. That is dual use — and it is not an effective way to protect your health.

Even a few cigarettes a day are dangerous, so quitting completely matters. If you have never smoked or used other tobacco products, including e-cigarettes, don't start.

Even a little smoking is harmful

• People who smoke fewer than 5 cigarettes a day can show early signs of cardiovascular disease.
• Cutting back may not prevent early death: heavy smokers who halve their smoking still have a very high risk of dying early. On average, smokers die 10 years earlier than nonsmokers.
• "Social smokers," who smoke in company rather than daily, have blood pressure and cholesterol similar to regular smokers.

What quitting completely gains you

Quitting improves your health and quality of life at any age, however long you have smoked.

People who quit live longer, and the earlier the better — but even quitting at 50 halves the risk of dying early from a smoking-related disease.

E-cigarettes: none has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as a way to quit.

A real story: in CDC's Tips From Former Smokers campaign, Kristy, a heavy smoker and mother of three, tried e-cigarettes at 33 to cut back but kept smoking cigarettes too; she later went back to cigarettes alone, and ended up in the hospital with a collapsed lung.

Free help to quit

• Text QUITNOW to 333888 (message and data rates may apply), or try the quitSTART app.
• Online: CDC's quit smoking guide (en español), Smokefree.gov and the Asian Smokers' Quitline.

Sources

Based on "Dual Use of Tobacco Products," Tips From Former Smokers, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drawing on reports of the Surgeon General and published studies; a work of the United States government in the public domain.