More details about the Gallup Poll.
Gallup interviewed 546 former smokers, of whom 25-30 said they quit with patches, 14-19 said they quit smoking with e-cigs, 9-13 said they quit with prescription drugs, and 3-8 said they quit with nicotine gum.
While a larger random sample of former smokers would provide more accurate and reliable evidence, a random sample of 546 is not meaningless (although that's probably what e-cig opponents would say just to discredit the survey findings).
From the Gallup Poll:
Overall, 19% of Americans in Gallup's July Consumption Survey say they currently smoke, 24% are former smokers (they used to smoke on a regular basis), and 56% have never smoked.
With 2,020 survey respondents, that question had a maximum margin of sampling error of 3%.
There are 240 million Americans over the age of 18, and 24% of that would be 57.6 million former smokers in the US (which is several million higher, but consistent with other survey findings). 3% of 57.6 million is
1.728 million, which is consistent with what I and others have estimated (as I've been saying since 2011 that more than a million smokers in the US have quit by switching to e-cigarettes). I think its now accurate to say that between 1-2 million smokers in the US have quit by switching to e-cigs.
I think its also now accurate to say that 1-2 million (and perhaps 2-3 million) smokers have significantly reduced their cigarette consumption by substituting e-cigarettes (but they still smoke daily or occassionally).
Also from Gallup Poll
The quarter of Americans who are former smokers are primarily defined by age: 41% of those 65 and older used to smoke, but do not now, compared with 12% of those aged 18 to 29.
This is also important, as most of the survey's "former smokers" (and most former smokers in the US) are older and quit decades ago.
Perhaps an even more important finding of this Gallup Poll was that just 5% of former smokers reported quitting with patches, just 2% reported quitting with prescription drugs, and only 1% reported quitting with nicotine gum.
That has to be considered terrible news for the FDA and for drug companies, who have aggressively marketed their products as "proven to be the most effective way to quit smoking" for decades, and who have given $200-$300 million to CTFK, ACS, AHA, ALA, AMA, AAP, Pinney Associates, ATTUD, Legacy, smoking cessation researchers, etc. to promote and lobby for special protection for FDA approved drugs.
What would be truly helpful would be surveys of "former smokers" who quit smoking in the past decade (or in the past five years), as I suspect that a majority (or close to a majority) of people who quit smoking in past five years did so with e-cigarettes.
But of course, the CDC, FDA, NCI, Legacy, ACS, etc. won't fund or conduct that type of truly needed survey, because doing so would expose their decades of lies, destroy their own credibility, and could cause Congressional hearings and heads to roll at FDA. We need to find someone to fund that type of survey/study.
