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E-cigarettes and the marketing push that surprised everyone

BMJ 2013; 347 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.f5780 (Published 26 September 2013) Cite this as: BMJ 2013;347:f5780

Rapid Response:

Re: E-cigarettes and the marketing push that surprised everyone

Stan Glantz and Rachel Grana suggest our trial[1] is biased against patches, with their comment “…those randomized to e-cigarettes got them for free and had them mailed to their homes, while those randomized to the patch were mailed vouchers they had to pay a small fee to redeem at a pharmacy.” They describe 'usual care' in New Zealand correctly, but neglect to mention what else was stated in our paper: that we provided vouchers to participants in the patches group to cover the redemption costs, and therefore to address this purported source of bias.

1.Bullen C, Howe C, Laugesen M, McRobbie H et al . Electronic cigarettes for smoking cessation: a randomized controlled trial. Lancet September 7, 2013 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(13)61842-5.

Competing interests: We declare that we have received no support from any companies for the submitted work and have no non-financial interests that might be relevant to the submitted work. ML, via his company Health New Zealand,previously did research funded by Ruyan (an e-cigarette manufacturer). CB and HM have undertaken research on Ruyan e-cigarettes funded by Health New Zealand, independently of Ruyan.

03 October 2013
Chris Bullen
Public health physician
Colin Howe, Murray Laugesen, Hayden McRobbie, Varsha Parag, Jonathan Williman, Natalie Walker,
National Institute for Health Innovation
The University of Auckland Tamaki Campus Morrin Road, St Johns, Auckland,