Leading-Brand Advertisement of Quitting Smoking Benefits for E-Cigarettes

To provide regulators and the US Food and Drug Administration with a description of cessation-themed advertising among electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) brands.

We performed a content analysis of 6 months (January through June 2015) of advertising by e-cigarette brands on their company-sponsored social media channels and blogs as well as user-generated content (testimonials) appearing within brand-sponsored Web sites. An explicit claim of cessation efficacy unambiguously states that e-cigarettes help in quitting smoking, and implicit claims use euphemisms such as "It works." We selected a cohort of 23 leading e-cigarette brands, either by their rank in advertising spending or their prevalence in Internet searches.

Among leading e-cigarette brands, 22 of 23 used cessation-themed advertisements. Overall, 23% of the advertisements contained cessation claims, of which 18% were explicit and 82% were implicit.

Among leading e-cigarette advertisers, cessation themes are prevalent with implicit messaging predominating over explicit quit claims.

These results can help the Food and Drug Administration clarify whether tobacco products should be regulated as drugs with therapeutic purpose or as recreational products.