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E-Cigarettes Reinforce Nicotine Addiction, Study Says

Medically reviewed by Carmen Pope, BPharm. Last updated on May 23, 2025.

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter

FRIDAY, May 23, 2025 — Pod-style e-cigarettes appear to be more addictive than nicotine gum, making it harder for vapers to kick the habit, a small-scale lab study has found.

E-cigarettes reinforced nicotine addiction more than nicotine gum among young adults who regularly vape, results show.

Specifically, the e-cigarettes more effectively reduced users’ cravings and withdrawal symptoms than the gum, researchers found.

Participants also reported more satisfaction from using their vape device than the gum, the study says.

“Today's electronic cigarettes have great potential to produce addiction in populations that are otherwise naïve to nicotine,” lead researcher Andrea Milstred, a doctoral student at West Virginia University, said in a news release. “This often includes youth and young adults.”

For the study, researchers asked 16 young adults who regularly use e-cigarettes to abstain from any nicotine overnight.

Each person was then asked to use their own vaping device or chew nicotine gum, researchers said.

Over multiple sessions, participants reported on the relief produced by vaping, chewing nicotine gum or chewing placebo gum containing no nicotine.

“Results demonstrate that participants’ own pod-style e-cigarettes were more reinforcing than active and placebo nicotine gum,” researchers wrote in their study.

This same pattern of relief from e-cigarettes has been previously observed in traditional tobacco cigarettes, when they were compared against nicotine gum, the study said.

The nicotine salts used in e-cigarettes reduce the harshness and bitter taste associated with higher nicotine concentrations, compared to freebase nicotine, researchers noted.

Younger people and non-smokers “may be more attracted to such types of e-cigarettes for reasons such as their unique design and pleasant flavors, as well as their ability to be used discreetly,” researchers concluded. “They also may find these e-cigarette types more palatable given that many contain liquid with nicotine salts.”

The new study, published May 20, appears in the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research.

Sources

  • Nicotine and Tobacco Research, May 20, 2025
  • Oxford University Press, news release, May 20, 2025

Disclaimer: Statistical data in medical articles provide general trends and do not pertain to individuals. Individual factors can vary greatly. Always seek personalized medical advice for individual healthcare decisions.

© 2025 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Posted May 2025

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