The Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute in Canada is one of 10 academic institutions that have been chosen to receive a share of a $15 million grant from the National Cancer Institute.
The National Cancer institute is being so generous with its funds because it hopes researchers will be able to discover which policies are likely to encourage smokers to choose vaping instead of cigarettes.
Speaking of the money awarded to Virginia Tech Carilion, Behavioural Health Research expert Warren Bickel said the institute intends to use $2.6 million of the research grant to try and ascertain the answer to this important question.
A number of different factors may encourage smokers to choose vaping instead of cigarettes and the research institute plans to concentrate on just four of them:
- Flavour choices
- Nicotine dosage
- The costs involved
- Smoke-free environments
“If a person gets enough nicotine, doesn’t have to pay extra taxes, can use the e-cigarette in places where conventional cigarettes are banned, and has several flavour options, perhaps the person will choose vaping over smoking,” Bickel explained. “Maybe it will only take one of those variables to influence a person’s decision, and maybe that’s the first step toward managing a continuously growing public health problem.”
Smokers who volunteer to take part in the study will use a new methodology called Experimental Tobacco Marketplace that will allow them to choose different kinds of tobacco products under different conditions.
“The overarching goal is to develop forecasting models to estimate the population health impact of different product regulatory schemes,” Bickel continued, “with the result of decreasing tobacco-related mortality and morbidity.”
Despite the fact that people know the dangers involved, smoking tobacco products continues to be the leading cause of presentable deaths. Figures provided by the Centres for Disease Control & Prevention state tobacco smoking causes nearly y 6 million deaths per year (worldwide). The foretasted figure is more than 8 million deaths per year by 2030, so it is not that surprising that the National Cancer Institute is so interested in discovering the factors that could encourage smokers to choose vaping instead of cigarettes.